Untangling Drug Confusion

I saw an interesting solution today for fighting medical errors. It has nothing to do with packaging, and only a little with labeling, so I doubt this is technology packaging professionals would employ. But it may give you some ideas for developing your own solutions to ongoing medical errors!

Invented by two nurses, ColorSafe IV Lines are color coded lines designed to prevent I.V. medication errors. Colored IV lines can be used for the second, third, and additional IV lines to make it easier for nurses to distinguish one line from another. If you doubt the difficulty of such a task, check out what could be the current tangled mess.

According to the company, using ColorSafe IV Lines eliminates the potential for injecting medication into the wrong line or hanging a bag onto the wrong line.

Of course, if nurses came to rely too much on color—or began to equate color with certain drugs—other problems could occur from using color as a crutch or a substitute for drug and line verification.

But this is a great start to untangling that mess!

Daphne Allen