Point Blank is a new way of packaging needles to protect medical professionals hands when re-capping needles, reducing the probability of accidents that can potentially cause HIV or hepatitis. The needles arrive on the ward within a sharps bin, this ensures there are enough sharps bins for the amount of needles on the ward, making handling needles safer.

Health care professionals are at a huge risk every day of contracting life-threatening diseases, one way of this happening is from a needle injury. A needle injury could cause one of many blood-borne diseases including HIV, Hepatitis B and C, all of which are becoming more prevalent in patients each year.

This project looked at why these needles injuries happened by talking to nurses, doctors, NHS occupational heath staff and many other NHS employees. Observations were carried out on hospital wards to see if key areas of focus could be identified. The research revealed many insights, which subsequently went on to inspire the final product.

The concept utilised the insight that the packaging of a needle would be with the nurse/doctor at the time in which they are most likely to get a needle injury. Thus, the packaging was designed to act as a guard to protect the users hand if they ever need to re-cap a needle.

Feedback on the concept revealed that the product could be seen to promote bad practice when handling needles. Further development went into insuring that the product would promote good practice.

This development focused on insuring that sharps bins were readily available on wards. Many concepts were explored and one stood out which achieved this the best. The idea was to pack the needles within a sharps bin, this would now mean that the ward would have enough sharps bin for the amount of needles.

The final feedback from the validation candidates was positive. Here are a series of excerpts “This device could be a real life saver, it works with out any effort from me” said a Gloucester A&E Nurse, “Point Blank is an exciting new project which challenges the way we deal with sharps in the workplace” stated a Southmead Doctor, later adding “The addition of the sharps bin to the project is an innovative and clever way of addressing the delivery of sharps bins to the ward”