Medical ID Bracelets in the News

If you are being treated for an illness or injury, the last ting you need is to be treated with a medicine that will give you a setback. That's exactly what happened to Fetham first aider Malcolm Cole and now he is keen to prevent it happening to other people. Mr Cole discovered he had a penicillin allergy 20 years ago after a nasty reaction to a doctor's treatment. He has been a voluntary first aider for 25 years and delivers paediatric instruction for Surrey First Aid Training, so he is aware of the importance of making medical staff aware of all allergies and conditions. Continue reading →

Hospitals in Oregon and Washington are standardizing overhead calls and color codes to reduce the risk of confusion or human error. The move follows a survey that found wide variation in the emergency codes among the region's hospitals. This matters because many doctors and nurses now work at more than one place. Correspondent Tom Banse reports. If you've spent any time in a hospital, you know that the staff sometimes speak in code. Overhead page: "Code blue in ER one. Code blue..." Here at Capital Medical Center in Olympia, "code blue" means a patient's breathing or heart has stopped. But at a few hospitals, code blue means "get security." So now imagine a scenario involving a doctor or nurse who's recently switched hospitals. Her patient goes into sudden cardiac arrest. She instinctively calls for code blue. But instead of the resuscitation team, the security guard comes running. This really happened at an unnamed Washington hospital. It is one reason Capital Medical Center's chief nursing officer favors standardization. Lisa Moylen: "When temporary personnel come, within the first hour they're here they're oriented to the codes because that's very important. It would certainly be a lot easier if there were some universal components." Lisa Moylen says the use of temp nurses and traveling nurses has gone way up since she started in medicine 40 years ago. Continue reading →