Medical dramas like ER and Grey's Anatomy captivated audiences with their realistic portrayal of high-pressure hospital environments. While not every emergency room visit is the life-or-death situation often portrayed in these programs, the stakes can still be incredibly high. In fact,13% of ER visits lead to hospital admission and 2% require critical care. This underscores the importance of medication safety in these and other high-risk settings. To mitigate the risk of errors and ensure patient well-being, advanced labeling solutions offer a crucial safeguard.

The Critical Features of Advanced Medication Labels

Advanced medication labeling solutions are specifically designed to address the challenges of high-risk healthcare settings. Here are three examples:

1) Enhancing Medication Safety with Visual Cues

Color-coded labels using ASTM color guidelines differentiate medication classes. For example, when a patient requires an opioid, the clinical staff knows the syringe should contain a blue colored label. Although color coding isn’t a substitute for double-checking and confirming a drug name, it does offer redundancy cues that support working memory which can reduce medication errors in high-stress environments.

2) Barcoding for Tracking and Verification

Adding barcodes to labels and integrating EHR systems into the process can further enhance patient safety. By scanning barcodes, healthcare providers can verify critical information instantly, minimizing human errors, and ensuring the “five rights” of medication administration.

3) Reducing the Complexity of Multiple Infusions

Treating patients in high-risk settings is complex, a difficulty often compounded by IV infusions. Managing one IV and line is straightforward. But, when multiple IV bags and lines are involved, the complexity increases.

In fact, multiple IV infusions are a significant source of medication errors, particularly involving high-alert medications. Common errors include rate or line mix-ups, incorrect IV line attachments, and piggyback infusion issues. A substantial portion of these errors (48%) resulted in moderate to severe harm, with nearly all reaching the patient.

IV Line & identification labels can prevent errors from occurring.

Applications of Advanced Labeling in High-Risk Healthcare Settings

Acute care settings like intensive care units, operating rooms, emergency departments, and oncology units, are high-pressure environments. The heightened demands on caregivers in these areas, including time pressures and frequent emergencies, take a considerable physical and emotional toll, highlighting the importance of task standardization. Labeling is a key area where standardization can make a significant difference.

Anesthesia Drug Labels

Labels affixed to containers like vials, syringes, and IV bags are crucial for clear communication and medication safety. These labels identify the drug name, concentration, dosage, and often include details like expiration dates. Specifically, anesthesia syringe labels prevent confusion and misidentification by providing printed medication names, eliminating errors caused by illegible handwriting, and allowing staff to record key dispensing data for prepared medications. In addition, transparent syringe dosage labels with highly visible fill lines address the challenge of gauging proper fill points, reducing the risk of incorrect dosages.

Medical Alert Stickers and Labels

Allergy labels and medical alert stickers are crucial for communicating vital patient information, including allergies, drug sensitivities, limb restrictions, and other critical data to staff, visitors, and the patients themselves.

Specimen Labeling

Lab tests are essential to diagnosing medical conditions, monitoring disease progression and planning treatments for patients in high-risk settings. But the only way to ensure the right information is uncovered, analyzed and acted upon is to ensure specimens are labeled properly.

Infection Prevention Labels and Signs

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) significantly increase patient mortality. Because hand hygiene remains a primary factor in infection transmission, infection prevention requires robust policies and procedures. Infection control labels including hand hygiene, PPE labels, precaution labels and signs support these policies.

Equipment Labels

Ventilators, infusion pumps, Foley catheters and patient monitors are just a few of the devices required in high-risk acute settings. Maintenance, calibration and safety labels guide the safe use of these essential medical devices. They inform caregivers about the maintenance regimen, calibration data, safety checks and more, allowing the clinical staff to use medical devices more reliably and elevate their ability to safely treat patients.

Supporting Compliance and Enhancing Patient Safety

The patient and caregiver challenges in high-risk settings put them at a greater risk of sentinel events. For example, falls, wrong-site surgery and medication management are all in the top 10 reasons these events occur. Poor labeling is often a factor.

Fall Risk

It’s estimated that there are up to one million falls that occur annually in hospitals. Although they can occur anywhere in the facility, patients who are acutely ill, often in high-risk settings, are especially vulnerable. Preventing falls requires managing numerous variables that vary from patient to patient, including:

• Patient History - all patients with a history of falls in the past three months are considered at higher risk for future falls.
• Mobility Assistance - those who require mobility assistance through the use of canes or walkers are more likely to experience an inpatient fall.
• The Impact of Medications - some medications contribute to an increase in fall risk. Identifying the drugs that are the most common culprits should be noted and dealt with accordingly.
• Continence - patients who require more frequent toileting have a greater risk of falls.
• Surgical Patients - a patient admitted for surgery or recovering from a procedure may have IV lines, or other tubing during their recovery period, that elevate fall risks.
• Vision Problems - patients who don’t have their glasses handy may be completely stable and capable of walking to the bathroom, but not notice something on the floor that they trip and fall over.

Medication Management

Despite the attention it receives, medication management remains a problematic area. Whether it’s in surgery or other inpatient settings, it’s imperative the clinical staff remain vigilant to prevent adverse drug events. When errors do occur, poor labeling is often cited as a central cause. Implementing labeling solutions that address:

• Storage and organization
• High-alert drugs and controlled substances
• Look-alike sound-alike drugs
• Labeling medications
• Medication preparation
• Medication administration

Reduce the potential for medication errors.

Implementation Tips for Advanced Labeling Solutions

Use these steps to select labels for the specific needs of high-risk environments.

Label Material Durability

With exposure to the liquids and frequent handling, durability is an essential element of anesthesia and drug labels. Materials like polyethylene and polypropylene ensure that labels remain intact and legible throughout their use and flexible enough to easily wrap around small syringes and vials.

Adhesive Quality

The same liquids and frequent handling that make durability an important consideration also elevate the importance of adhesive selection. Labels need to securely adhere to different surfaces, including vials, syringes, and IV bags, without falling off or flagging. This ensures that information is always accessible and readable.

The plastic present in dispensing vials, IV bags and medication containers can create challenges as well. For example, low surface area plastics (LSE) often used in these containers, are soft, low density plastics which are difficult to bond. In addition, the smoothness/roughness, porosity and flexibility of the container and outgassing, a process that occurs when plastic is exposed to heat or sunlight, can all cause labels to peel or fall off.

Staff Training

Labeling medications may seem obvious, but a carelessly applied label can inhibit important information on a syringe or IV line that increases the risk of errors. Plus, details like time:

• Do you use military time or regular time?

.. and date

• Do you use an actual day or a date?

Need to follow specific department protocols. Training is essential to ensure steps are followed consistently throughout the facility.

Leveraging Technology

Implementing barcodes on medication labels has significantly advanced medication safety. To illustrate, a barcode medication administration system (BCMA) reads the barcode of the patient’s wristband, the healthcare worker’s identification and the medication. The system verifies the right medication, the right patient and the right moment. It also verifies the medication is administered only by authorized staff. The information is then viewable in EHR systems.

A study by BMC Nursing found integrating barcoded anesthesia and drug labels with EHR systems reduced medication errors by 30%.

Advanced Labeling Solutions at United Ad Label

With over 60 years of experience serving high-risk environments, United Ad Label’s advanced medication labeling solutions help acute care facilities elevate patient safety and improve care. Contact us to learn more.

 

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NOTES

Here are some high-risk healthcare environments for patients:

1. Intensive Care Units (ICUs): 

• High-risk procedures: Patients in ICUs often undergo complex procedures like intubation, central line insertion, and ventilator management, which increase the risk of infection and complications.
• Immunocompromised patients: Many ICU patients have weakened immune systems, making them more susceptible to infections.
• Multiple healthcare providers: The frequent interaction with various healthcare professionals increases the risk of cross-contamination.

2. Operating Rooms:

• Surgical site infections: The invasive nature of surgeries creates a risk of infection at the surgical site.
• Anesthesia risks: Anesthesia can lead to complications like allergic reactions, respiratory depression, and cardiac arrest.
• Human error: Surgical errors, such as wrong-site surgery or retained surgical items, can have devastating consequences.

3. Emergency Departments:

• Rapid patient turnover: The fast-paced environment can lead to errors in diagnosis, treatment, and medication administration.
• Diverse patient population: Emergency departments see patients with a wide range of conditions, including highly contagious diseases, which increases the risk of infection.
• Stressful conditions: The high-pressure environment can contribute to burnout and mistakes among healthcare providers.

4. Long-term Care Facilities:

• Elderly and vulnerable patients: Residents in these facilities are often older and have multiple chronic conditions, making them more susceptible to infections and other complications.
• Antibiotic resistance: The overuse of antibiotics in long-term care settings can contribute to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
• Staffing shortages: Inadequate staffing can lead to compromised patient care and increased risk of infections.

5. Dialysis Centers:

• Central line infections: Patients undergoing dialysis often have central lines, which are a common source of bloodstream infections.
• Immunocompromised patients: Many dialysis patients have weakened immune systems due to underlying kidney disease, making them more susceptible to infections.
• Contaminated equipment: Improper cleaning and sterilization of dialysis equipment can lead to outbreaks of infections.