Dealing With Headaches

Here’s one from the “Say It Ain’t So!” Department:

A study from the University of Pennsylvannia has come in about how barcodes on medication given at hospitals were to cut down on errors. Turns out, barcodes don’t seem to make a positive difference and also seem to contribute to errors by already overworked nurses.

Perhaps the Hospital Had A Bad Day?

Nope, sorry. The study lasted a lot longer than a few days — it lasted a few years covering five different hospitals that have a barcoding medication system already firmly in place. The study also suggested that the barcoding system that we currently have often cuases more problems than it solves. When a harried nurse encounters these problems he or she will try to use shortcuts in order to get whatever medicine they think the patient needs.

The conclusion from the study wasn’t “Technology is bad.” Rather, it was, “We can make this SO much better by concentrating on changing these areas.”

And, quite frankly, we need all the suggestions we can get with our hospitals. Another study which came out in 2007 showed that errors in hopsitals (including being given the wrong medication or wrong dosage of your medication) rose 3% from 2003-2005 alone.

But I Gotta Go To The Hospital Tomorrow

As medical systems go, ours is still about the best around in care (if not cost). If you have surgery scheduled for tomorrow, don’t freak out reading this! Still go for your surgery, please. But there are some things you can do to help reduce the chances of medical errors while you’re loopy on painkiller.

• Put identification tags on your luggage or daybag to help nurses coming on shift idenify you while you’re loopy in your hospital room
• When you get your ID bracelet, make sure they put the right name on there (no, I’m not kidding).
• When you have a test done in the hopsital and never hear about the results, that could be a mistake. Unless you are specifically told “no news is good news”, keep asking about the results.
• Write down a list of your allergic reactions and medications and tape them to your forehead.
• When you can, ask what any medicine is and what is it for. When my Mom had her last surgery, she called me to Google information about the drugs the nurses wanted her to take. I was able to help confirm that she was to get the meds.
• If you’re in the hospital and loopy and can’t figure out what’s going on, call someone you know to call or visit the hospital and find out for you and then give you a report. If you don’t have a friend or relative to do this, call your primary doctor to do it.

Hope this helps