ID of patients with long names

[J Schuler]

I was wondering what policy everyone has when a patient has a name longer than the LIS/labels tolerate?

For example, we had a patient whose name was longer than 23 characters. The printer tries to print as much of the name as possible. Once the name is longer, it goes into a different field and writes over the other information or is cut off the label rather than automatically truncating it.

How do you handle this when hand labeling the blood bank specimen, and the patient is unable to confirm the spelling of his or her name?

How do you handle this when the name is cut off after a certain point on your transfusion tag?

Some at our facility do not see this as a major issue; however, I feel stronger. I guess I am just a Blood Banker at heart and expect perfection.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated. Jen

[Mabel Adams]

Our system will truncate the name on the patient's hospital armband and addressograph "chip" but have the whole thing in the computer and usually on the specimen order labels. Usually our phlebotomists call down to ask what they should do. I will accept either the patient's full name or the truncated version, although it is a significant part of the picture to know that the name has been truncated and that the phlebotomist recognized this. We use the name, Medical Record number and a specific BB armband number for ID.

My theory is that the reason we reject spelling errors is because we feel they suggest an error in ID of the patient. This case is not an error, just the best we could do given the limitations of the computer. At least that is my take on it.

[John C. Staley]

I'm with Mabel. We do the best we can within the limitations imposed on us. You can't "fix" the computer system so you will have to figure out an acceptable way to work around it. If it makes you more comfortable add a third identifier to the two you already require, maybe Name, Medical Record Number and Birthdate. If you have 80% of the name and the other two match then I would think that would be acceptable and as Mabel suggests, you should be able to confirm the full name in the computer.

It might be interesting to do a study and see just how many of your patients have names that exceed your 23 character limitation. You can then decide how much time, effort and anxiety you want to spend on the issue.

:fingerscr

[Eagle Eye]

We do same as John and Mabel. We try to call the floor to make sure patient name is so and so and document on the request that specimen is aceptable to process. If the name is cutoff on the transfusion tag and we get a call from the floor, we explain the whole thing to patient's RN. We do not get that many patient..I would think 3-4/year.

[GilTphoto]

Our labels are also truncated, but the patient's armband contains the full name, so we require the full name on specimen's BB Typenex armband label. The full name is also displayed in the computer.