Interesting articles in Men's Health

[Scooby Doo]

Bar codes might be implemented on all medications in hospitals that will require scanning before use...More work? but it says it will save 100,000 patients a year who die as a result of medical errors.

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[deva]

Apparently a lot of errors are a result of pharmacists misreading prescriptions. Barcodes would help. Also, sometimes drugs with similar names are confused... so people have suggested making the doctors (or computers) capitalize the parts of the name that are different from similar-sounding drugs.

Good to see that other SDNers read Men's Health.

 

[Drako]

Could the deaths be attributed to the fact that some doctors' writings are illegible? j/k

 

[BlackPuma]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Drako:
•Could the deaths be attributed to the fact that some doctors' writings are illegible? j/k •••••SOME????

my goodness, I think kindergartens have better handwritings than physicians....urs truly as well

 

[Green912]

Just about every person in the Hospital seems to have a PDA. Someone make a barcode scanner attachment and retire!!

 

[MacGyver]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Green912:
•Just about every person in the Hospital seems to have a PDA. Someone make a barcode scanner attachment and retire!!•••••Yep, you could design an IR barcode scanner into the bottom of the PDA device (barcode lengths are approx equal to the width of a PDA in most cases).

As far as a peripheral device (it would have to have a wide head for reading all the barcode strips simultaneously) and would be fairly clunky and bulky, but still could be done.

 

[GATORade]

Classes in penmanship may suffice :wink: . However, barcodes I'm sure will work just fine.
You would think that when prescribing a potentially lethal substance one would take the extra second to write clearly, no?