Becton Dickinson and Needle Sticks: A Business Perspective

Becton Dickinson and Needle Sticks: A Business Perspective

Introduction

During the last several decades it has been noticed that AIDS and acute dilemmas are one of the most controversial issues for the healthcare workers. There are several problems for the health caregiver that if they inject any AIDS patient, they could also be infected with the virus. It has been noticed that needle stick are common caused incidents in the hospitals. There are increasing trends of AIDS in the healthcare workers due to this needle stick. There is a rough investigation that 64 health workers each year that are affected by AIDS. AIDS is not the only virus that is transmitted through this needle stick but viruses like Hepatitis A, B, & C are also the infection that are reported. Last year there are around 12000 healthcare workers that were reported with the hepatitis B virus. The rate of hepatitis C was not low they are also increasing by 9600 per year. There are many other lethal viruses that are transmitted from this needle virus. The cost of all these injuries was approximate at $400 million to $1 billion a year (Roberts, 1987).

Needlestick injuries are the most common work-related accidents in health care workers. In needle-stick injuries to various infectious agents are transmitted, are practically important, especially the hepatitis viruses B (HBV) and C (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Issue and Problem

Then the problem was identified that the only way the issue could be resolved is through save syringes. Around 70 percent of all the needles and syringes are made by Becton Dickinson. As the issue was crucial and urgent Becton Dickinson refuse to bring change in their syringes.

The dilemma of harmful actions is a significant case of ethical dilemma and assumes a situation in which each of the options identified in the process of ethical decision making will cause harm or injury (Reynolds,1998). It has been seen that they did not showed any curiosity to solve the problem. It was also observed that the new design implementation was not the difficult task for the Becton but they have to face the competition with the flagship product. In the era of 1972 to 1986 Becton did not change anything in their product. In the year 1986, a nurse Norma and a syringe engineer Charles made a protected syringe. This syringe had several protections that were needed according to the current emergency scenario. There was not difficulty to adopt the design of the syringe for the nurses (Devices, 1991). At several places this problem raised and discussed. However, there are some lack of considerations by the company.

The Marriott Hotel

Top sales managers for Becton Dickinson and Company, the world's biggest needle manufacturer, had gathered for their periodical gathering, and listed on the plan was a new apparatus that could radically cut into a deadly endemic of needle sticks among health care workers. They were also anxious to cut down this ...