Patient Safety First
At the Erasmus MC, patient safety is one of the most important focus areas. To increase and ensure patient safety, the Erasmus MC has implemented a Safety Management System for high-risk medication.
Mediclabel plays an important role in the Safety Management System: it generates specifically designed barcode labels that are applied to all medication before they are administered to patients.
Mediclabel helps the nurses in anesthesiology to prepare parenteral drugs in observance of the Safety Management System protocols. Dave Gonlag, nurse anesthetist at the Erasmus MC: “Mediclabel helps us to ensure that the correct substance is prepared in the right concentration and in the right manner. It complements the guidelines on parenteral administration set forth in the Quality Information System.”
The Result
“ Before making our final choice, we looked at a number of solutions. The possibilities, flexibility and user-friendliness of Mediclabel finally won us over. We can now work according to a single standard, and follow our Safety Management System’s protocols. All activities are fully traceable and introducing barcode scanning helps us to improve medication and patient safety. ”
Consistency
The Erasmus MC strives to work according to a single standard system. Consistent working practices yield transparency and safety. The system has been validated and approved for use by a hospital pharmacist. In the OR itself the nurse anesthetist can access Mediclabel directly from the Patient File Management System to generate labels for required additional medication.
Mediclabel is also in use in several post-op care units, the intensive care and intensive cardiac care units, the thorax center, the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute (formerly known as Daniel den Hoed), the Erasmus MC-Sophia (children’s hospital) and the day clinic.
Project Details
- Help preparation of parenteral drugs according to Safety Management System protocols
- Increase medication and patient safety by using the GS1 Datamatrix
- Implement the double check required by the Health Care Inspectorate
- 640 users averaging 30,000 labels per month
Lessons Learned
“My advice would be to think carefully about how the system should ideally support daily operations. Follow the different steps that all involved units and suppliers must go through, and continuously validate against the established safety protocols. Start designing the label in time, in close cooperation with the hospital pharmacist. It is not easy to get to a standard label design that satisfies all requirements and is easy to use at the same time. Ask the ultimate end users to test different designs. In order to build support for the new system, the look and feel as well as the user-friendliness are of great importance. Keep it as simple as possible.”
Watch the video ‘Standardization at Erasmus MC: from high-risk medication to assets’.
