Quality & Patient Safety

British hospitals told to implement standardized patient wrist bands

Patient Safety Monitor: Global Edition, July 24, 2007

Britain's National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has told the National Health System that hospitals must standardize the color and words on patient wrist bands if it wants to prevent the nearly 3,000 instances of wrong treatment that happened last year, reports The Guardian. Both inconsistent coloring of wrist bands and illegible handwriting of the data on the wrist bands has created some near fatal events.

The NPSA is asking that every hospital in Britain address wrist bands in the same way, with the same colors and patient information present on each band. Often, caregivers look to these bands when a patient is unable to communicate this information on his or her own, according to the report.

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