At my hospital, we have always had a policy to have two trained hospital staff present to verify positive patient identification and initials blood bank specimens collected . However in the past year, we purchased one of the bar code scanning systems to positively identify patients during specimen collection. My issue now is that hospital administration wants to do away with requirement that a second person be persent. Outside of pleading with admin for patient safety. Any good advise that can turn this event in my favor.

YOur barcode scanner---they need to scan patient's wrist band, right? If yes then you need to look at why you want two signatures. If you have validated barcode system I do not see the benefit of keeping two people identification unless you see a problem with new system. (eg. they are scanning barcode some where else not on pt's wrist band)

I had the same questions/comments as aakupaku. (Would you feel more comfortable staying with the 2-person policy for a certain period of time until you are confident that the bar code scanner system work safely, then dropping the 2-person policy?)

My thoughts exactly, if you are barcoding patients wristbands and then scanning that is a pretty positive ID right there. We have a 2 person policy too. If I have barcoding on patients, I would drop my 2 person policy.

One word of caution - be sure that it is barcodes on the patients that are being scanned. We have problems at my institution because barcodes are used for other applications also (billing, misc record keeping, etc.) and are available in many forms/locations. POC nurses simply take their glucose meter, scan a barcode on a chart at the nurses station, go into a room and perform a test.

:bonk:That certainly defeats the purpose of "bedside ID"!

Do you have a way to audit the bedside ID to know that the wristband was being scanned?

Is it impossible to scan anything except the wristband?

What are the downtime plans?

What is done in the Emergency Department?

While I agree that bedside scanning is great, there are plenty of creative staff out there to find a way to work around this.

You need to be comfortable with the new system.

Linda Frederick

We just went live with a barcode hospital banding system in July. We still use the Hollister banding system for BB because we aren't going to change until I am sure the new system is safe enough. Well, alas, those ideas that are wonderful in journal articles are always a lot stickier in real life. There has been so much trouble with the barcode readers that phlebs have developed all sorts of creative work-arounds, many without anyone's okay. Also, several parts of the hospital had decided not to use that approach--peri-operative for one--so now we have a patchwork of where it is used and where it is not, phlebs that don't trust it, nursing units that were supposed to use it for their own draws but can't figure it out so have the phlebs print off labels for the patient's tests and leave them on the nursing unit for when the nurse gets the line draw collected. Boy, am I glad we didn't change the BB system yet. We are working on getting the bugs out of the hard and software; after that, we have to break all the bad habits and get the rest of the hospital on an equally good system for patient ID. As usual, nothing is any better than the system and training involved--no matter how flashy the technology, if people don't understand and use it right it is worse than the old system.