Good policies help improve labeling
Douglas Dotan, MA, CQIA, president of CRG Medical in Houston, which offers patient safety quality management solutions to health care providers, suggests risk managers consider those policies and procedures that have helped some health care providers reduce errors related to unlabeled syringes:
- Determine what should happen when a health care provider finds an unlabeled syringe. Many health care systems expect staff to discard the unlabeled syringe and obtain the needed medication anew. That can be expensive, but the cost of discarding the drugs is one more reason to push for consistent labeling.
- Follow the golden rule: A syringe should never leave the practitioner's hand without a label. To be effective, the policy must require immediate labeling, not simply before the drug is injected. Some providers have a habit of leaving the filled syringe next to the medication vial as a reminder of the contents, placing a label on the syringe before moving it to the bedside. That is most common when the nurse is filling more than one syringe at a time. That is not sufficient, Dotan says.
- Be careful with color-coded labels. Even with preprinted labels, the user must be careful to read the name of the medication every time before injecting the drug. Some color-coding systems use the same color for a class of drug or a general type, but the printed name of the drug varies. Caution staff not to rely too much on color coding. They always must read the label even if the color is correct.
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