Authors (including presenting author) :
Poon YC(1), Wong KW(1), Chan OK(1), Lo SO (1), Yeung MF(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Intensive Care Unit, Tseung Kwan O Hospital
Introduction :
Each patient admitted to our hospital would be issued with a patient’s wristband (PWB) with a 2-D barcode containing his or her unique identifiers. Using a scanner with a specific cross-matching program built-in to scan on 2-D barcode printed on PWB, the patient’s identifier can easily be confirmed without an error. In 2016/17, our ICU/ HDU has implemented the In-patient Medication Order Entry (IPMOE) in minimizing medication errors to our patients. Since then, our staff increases the frequency to scan PWB on top of the procedure in Generic Clinical Request System (GCRS).
However, our staff always encounters a trouble that every time when scanning the PWB, we need to locate it in which extremities under their counterpane by guessing first. This matter is of great consequence not only decreasing our efficiency but also causing disturbance to our patients.
In order to tackle this challenge, our ICU/ HDU Quality and Safety team therefore has been conducting the project with the theme – Accurate Locate, Efficient Scan (ALES).
Objectives :
To facilitate the scanning process of IPMOE and GCRS.
To increase the overall efficiency.
To minimize our ICU/ HDU patient disturbance
To acknowledge our staff concern and engagement.
Methodology :
Our method is designing a square signage with approximately 10cm by 10cm with magnetic material finishing behind. This signage can be freely sticking magnetically on the electricity-sockets trunking on each ICU/ HDU bed-side to facilitate our staff to locate PWB instantly without disturbing to our patients.
The signage is named as ‘We Care’, a combination of a letter ‘W’ and ‘C’; which means – ‘we care’ for the medication safety and patient identity. Besides, the letter ‘C’ is also symbolic for the PWB location. The color of the signage consists of pink, blue and green. It coincides with our uniform color codes in female nurses, male nurses and doctors respectively – that is our ICU/ HDU team.
The respectively locations to indicate the PWB are easily by rotating it into consecutive 90 degree.
Result & Outcome :
We had distributed 50 questionnaires (appendix) to our ICU/ HDU nurses and 44 feedbacks (88%) were received. From the results, we noticed that neither our colleagues could remember the locations of patient wristbands nor our patients could locate their wristbands. Before this project, most of our colleagues experienced frustration when locating the patient wristbands incorrectly. After implemented the ALES project, they adapted to look at the ALES signage first before located the patient wristbands. All of them found the signage was easy to comprehend and the majority of them agreed that posting up the signage was not a heavy workload. Besides, more than 80% of our colleagues believed that the ALES project was beneficial to both patients and nurses in the way that it shortens the scanning procedures and minimizes patient interruptions. One colleague commented that this project could also facilitate other healthcare professionals to get access to the patient wristbands. Overall, the ALES project was a success in our department. The scanning process of IMPOE and GCRS was facilitated and the overall efficiency was increased. Patient disturbance was minimized during the scanning procedures. And our staff’s concerns were well acknowledged. The four objectives were fulfilled after this project. We believe this project is very supportive of positive changes and makes things better towards the healthy workplace. We also recommend other departments or hospitals to implement this project to improve the quality of service.
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