Andrius Macas, Kristina Sederevičiūtė, Urtė Paškevičiūtė, Kristina Eismontaitė, Alina Vilkė, Aušra Geivelienė
Abstract
According to research, error rate in anaesthesiology is approximately 1 in 1300 drug administrations. Therefore, measures were taken in order to reduce this number. Nowadays Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Union confirmed standards of drug labeling are used worldwide; these same standards are also used in Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Department of Anaesthesiology. Three standards that complement each other are: standard specification for labels for small-volume (100 ml or less) parenteral drug containers; standard practice to enhance identification of drug names on labels; anaesthetic and respiratory equipment – user-applied labels for syringes containing drugs used during anaesthesia – colour, design and performance standard.According to these recommendations, previously used labeling of ampoules, syringes or medication bags by writing with a black marker or using a manufacturer’s offered non-standard label was substituted with standardized drug labeling based on the 2008 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. This colour-code labeling is based on practice, that every group of medications has a different label background colour. The antagonists’ labels are the same colour, but with white diagonal stripes.Because of the new system, there have been noticed great practical benefits in daily clinical work and significant improvement in quality indicators.
Keyword(s): anaesthesiology, labeling of medications and syringes, drug administration errors.
DOI: 10.5200/sm-hs.2014.034
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