ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 11, 1996 TAG: 9610110060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
SOURCE: Associated Press
Medical students should be covered by workers' compensation because they could contract AIDS and hepatitis through needle sticks, University of Virginia researchers said Thursday.
In the interim, medical schools should provide long-term health and disability insurance for students in case they get a blood-borne infection while testing patients' blood, the three authors wrote in an opinion column in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The authors' concern about the financial security of medical students follows increased awareness about the dangers hospital workers face from accidental needle sticks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 51 cases of job-related transmissions of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in health care workers through June of 1996. For another 108 health care workers who have contracted the virus, transmission might have come from on-the-job tasks, such as needle sticks.
A former Pennsylvania nurse began a national campaign in February to to persuade hospitals to use safer needles. The nurse, Lynda M. Arnold, was infected with HIV while removing a catheter needle from a patient's vein. The patient moved his arm, forcing the needle into her palm.
Just like health care workers, medical students risk contracting HIV or hepatitis through similar incidents, the authors wrote.
But unlike health care workers, students often lack long-term insurance and don't have workers' compensation coverage, meaning infected students might have no other recourse than to sue teaching hospitals to pay their bills.
``Because of their ambiguous occupational status, infected medical students may fall through the normal safety net of workers' compensation and private insurance, leaving them at risk of financial destitution in the face of a debilitating illness,'' wrote Patricia M. Tereskerz, Dr. Richard D. Pearson and Janine Jagger.
The authors also recommend that teaching hospitals use safer needles, provide more training in proper intravenous techniques and administer drugs that reduce HIV transmission to students possibly exposed to the virus.
``Coverage for infected students could be improved by amending legislation to extend workers' compensation benefits to students in jurisdictions where they are not covered,'' the authors wrote.
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