Barcode technology: its role in increasing the safety of blood transfusion

BACKGROUND: Incorrect blood component transfusion is the most frequent serious incident associated with transfusion. Errors responsible for these incidents frequently involve patient misidentification. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: This study evaluated a barcode patient identification system involving...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Transfusion (Philadelphia, Pa.) Vol. 43; no. 9; pp. 1200 - 1209
Main Authors:	Turner, C.L., Casbard, A.C., Murphy, M.F.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Oxford, UK and Malden, USA Blackwell Science Inc 01-09-2003 Blackwell Publishing
Subjects:	Anesthesia. Intensive care medicine. Transfusions. Cell therapy and gene therapy Biological and medical sciences Blood Transfusion - standards Blood. Blood and plasma substitutes. Blood products. Blood cells. Blood typing. Plasmapheresis. Apheresis Computers, Handheld Evaluation Studies as Topic Humans Inpatients Inservice Training Medical Audit Medical sciences Patient Identification Systems - methods Transfusions. Complications. Transfusion reactions. Cell and gene therapy Human Incompatibility Evaluation Questionnaire Simplification Transfusion Patient Identification Blood Prevention Complication Safety Bar code
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Summary:	BACKGROUND: Incorrect blood component transfusion is the most frequent serious incident associated with transfusion. Errors responsible for these incidents frequently involve patient misidentification. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: This study evaluated a barcode patient identification system involving hand‐held computers for blood sample collection for compatibility testing and the administration of blood. Audit of practice was carried out before and after its introduction. RESULTS: The baseline audit revealed poor practice, particularly in patient identification. Significant improvements were found in the procedure for the administration of blood following the introduction of barcode patient identification, including an improvement from 11.8 to 100 percent in the correct verbal identification of patients (p ≤ 0.001). Similar significant improvements were found in matching verbally stated identification details with details on patient identification wristbands, in correct patient identification before the collection of blood samples, and in the proportion of correctly labeled samples. Staff found the barcode identification system easy to operate and preferred it to standard procedures. CONCLUSIONS: A barcode patient identification system was found to simplify the clinical transfusion process and improve practice. These results provide support for further work on the development of such systems for transfusion and for other hospital procedures requiring patient identification.
Bibliography:	ArticleID:TRF428 ark:/67375/WNG-FW6CJFQQ-R istex:8465D4287F3016C5C507FCBFEB75D121C111639B 2003;43:1200‐1209. TRANSFUSION We acknowledge the support of the National Blood Service for funding this study. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0041-1132 1537-2995
DOI:	10.1046/j.1537-2995.2003.00428.x