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Eight tips for perioperative medication labeling success

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, February 24, 2006

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The following are tips for medication labeling:

1. Make it easy on yourself. Make sure that sterile markers, preprinted labels, blank labels, and nonsterile markers are readily available in the perioperative area. Consider placing markers and labels in your sterile packs.

Tip: Conduct usability testing before final purchase of your markers and labels (i.e., check to make sure that labels will stick on basins and that markers don't smear too much). Also notify your purchasing department staff so they know that the markers and labels you have selected have undergone usability testing and that changing buyers will require new usability testing prior to purchase.

2. Create an explicit policy and process for drawing up medications in the perioperative setting. A frequent failure point occurs when a medication is poured into a medicine bowl or cup and then drawn up into a syringe. The two-step process can lead to one of the two containers not being labeled.

Redesigning the process to remove the extra step (e.g., drawing the drug directly into the syringe) reduces the potential for harm and error.

3. Have an explicit process to cross-check and verify. All medications and solutions handed over to the sterile field should have a two-person verification process. This process should involve verbal read-backs and should include the drug, concentration, dose, and expiration date. During each hand-off (e.g., relief break, shift change), all solutions and medications should be cross-checked and verified between staff.

To learn five more tips for medication labeling success, go to Briefings on JCAHO (BOJ). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire February issue of BOJ. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BOJ have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their February issue.

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