Failure to accurately identify patients in the healthcare setting can result in medication errors, testing errors, transfusion errors, and much more.
Focusing on consistent and accurate methods to identify patients will decrease the number of errors, allowing your hospital or clinic to run more smoothly.
Below are a handful of ways that using proper labeling techniques can help you achieve accurate patient identification.
The wristband is the most traditional form of patient ID in the healthcare industry. The use of barcodes on ID wristbands allows the hospital to accomplish a larger range of capabilities. Barcodes also makes the potential for errors less likely.
Encourage your staff to always label containers used for blood and other specimens in the presence of the patient. Accurately identifying patients and correctly labeling specimens are critical to ensure patient safety. If a specimen is not accurately identified, it can lead to delayed or wrong diagnoses, missed or incorrect treatments, blood transfusion errors, and more. Inaccurate results can also lead to additional laboratory testing.
Using two patient identifiers is another way to decrease the likelihood of mistakes happening in your hospital or clinic. The two identifiers need to be directly associated with the individual – those same two identifiers should then be associated to the medication, blood product, specimen container, treatment, or procedure.
The use of automation during the patient identification process is a great way to decrease the likelihood of mistakes happening. Automation can be used in many different areas of your clinic as well, for example, electronic order entry, bar coding, radiofrequency identification (RFI), biometrics and more.
Nev’s Ink offers wristbands and many other forms of patient and visitor identification for your hospital or clinic. To shop, click here. To request an estimate on a made-to-order item, please contact us at (800) 638-7465 or email us at [email protected].
