About Wristbands
Are you struggling to select a wristband for
your hospital that can be bar coded and scanned easily? Your
questions most likely are:
-What symbology should we use?
-What should we encode on the wristband?
-What material wristband is best for less
wear and tear?
-Should we position the bar code vertically
or horizontally on the wristband?
-How do we get our nurses to scan the actual
wristband at the bedside and not the patient's paperwork or anything else?
Answers
-What symbology should we use? Bar
code symbologies vary. The most flexible and safe symbology is 128
due to the amount of characters to encode, the size, and the check digit
uniqueness. Many hospitals are using 128 on their wristbands.
-What should we encode on the
wristband? Some hospitals encode medical record number and account
number. However, since account number refers to a particular visit
and can target the software more specifically to lookup patient data for
a particular visit, it is advisable to
use it. Medical record number and account number can be used but it
is not necessary for most software packages.
-What material wristband is
best for less wear and tear? All cotton wristbands wear and tear
much quicker than a wristband made with polyester and cotton.
-Should we position the bar code vertically
or horizontally on the wristband? Think about it. Scanning a
1-D bar code on a curved wrist could be awkward and cause extra time and
frustration. If your wristband can fit the encoded data, it is
advised, from experience, to use a vertical wristband. "We
tried locating our bar code horizontally on our wristbands and found
that they were hard to scan because of the curvature of the wrist.
When we positioned the bar code horizontally, our users found it much
easier to locate and scan", Vicki Knight, Staff Nurse, ICU, Norwalk
Hospital.
-How do we get our nurses to scan the actual wristband
at the bedside and not the patient's paperwork or anything else?
Nurses are very busy individuals. They cannot be fishing around for
the bar code on the wristband. If the task of finding it becomes too
arduous they will find ways to get around the task. For instance, if
the bar code is on the paperwork as well, they might find they can scan
that before entering the patient room to speed up their task. To get
around this, you can a) use a different symbology on the bar coded
paperwork and program the bedside software to only read a specific
symbology, b) encode data differently on the paperwork so it doesn't match
the wristband data. The bedside software will not read it correctly
and force a scan of the wristband, c) enforce a strict policy and be sure
your bedside software gives you the tools to monitor the use of it
providing you with statistics on user productivity, number of scans and
scan errors, etc.
_____________________________________________________________
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Email us.
This section was written by Marisa Barbieri,
Healthcare IT Solutions Consultant and
panel member at Hospitalbarcoding.com. Email her at staff@Hospitalbarcoding.com.
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