Pro/con debate: color-coded medication labels.

Newspaper/Magazine Article

Pro/con debate: color-coded medication labels.

February 20, 2019

Janik LS, Vender JS, Grissinger M, Litman RS. APSF Newsletter. February 2019;33:72-75.

View more articles from the same authors.

This pair of commentaries reviews the use of color-coded medications as an anesthesia safety strategy. The first article argues for implementing standard color sets to delineate drug class and use to improve medication safety. The dissenting article suggests that color-coded medications may decrease the chance of clinicians reading syringe labels carefully due to overreliance on color representation as a shortcut for reading the label.

Related information

Free full text (Con)

Free full text (Pro)

Related Resources From the Same Author(s)

Use of a public health law framework to improve medication safety by anesthesia providers.

March 20, 2019

Health Care-Associated Infections

October 16, 2019

Handoff Communication.

October 4, 2017

The APSF: 20-year anniversary of the first patient safety organization: past, present & future.

June 27, 2007

Enhancing a culture of safety through disclosure of adverse events.

March 10, 2021

Improving patient safety in the office: The Institute for Safety in Office-Based Surgery.

August 17, 2011

Achieving a successful patient safety program with implementation of a harm reduction strategy.

October 25, 2023

Three quarters of preventable patient harm stems from situation awareness breakdowns: recognizing and addressing the core issue.

February 21, 2024

Clinical Uncertainty in Primary Care: The Challenge of Collaborative Engagement.

March 5, 2014

Poor medication history plus slow symptom onset delays a diagnosis.

November 4, 2009

Learning from samples of one or fewer.

March 6, 2005

Omission of high-alert medications: a hidden danger.

January 7, 2015

APSF endorsed statement on revising recommendations for patient monitoring during anesthesia.

May 4, 2022

Medication errors involving overrides of healthcare technology.

January 20, 2016

Medication errors affecting pediatric patients: unique challenges for this special population.

October 7, 2015

Analysis of reported drug interactions: a recipe for harm to patients.

January 11, 2017

Errors originating in hospital and health-system outpatient pharmacies.

July 19, 2017

Pharmacist linkage in care transitions: from academic medical center to community.

October 30, 2019

Medication errors attributed to health information technology.

March 29, 2017

Wrong-patient medication errors: an analysis of event reports in Pennsylvania and strategies for prevention.

June 12, 2013

Medication errors in pediatric anesthesia: a report from the Wake Up Safe quality improvement initiative.

November 22, 2017

Artificial intelligence, patient safety, and achieving the quintuple aim in anesthesiology.

February 22, 2023

Perioperative medication errors: uncovering risk from behind the drapes.

January 16, 2019

Prescribing errors that cause harm.

October 5, 2016

Medication errors involving healthcare students.

March 30, 2016

Position Statement on Criminalization of Medical Error and Call for Action to Prevent Patient Harm from Error.

October 26, 2022

Outcomes from Wake Up Safe, the pediatric anesthesia quality improvement initiative.

February 3, 2021

New Horizons in Patient Safety: Understanding Communication: Case Studies for Physicians.

April 5, 2017

Patient safety: Part I. Patient safety and the dermatologist.

August 19, 2009

Racial differences in antibiotic prescribing by primary care pediatricians.

March 20, 2013

Industrial and Systems Engineering and Health Care: Critical Areas of Research: Final Report.

September 22, 2010

Duplicate medication order errors: safety gaps and recommendations for improvement.

October 12, 2022

Health Professions Education.

June 12, 2019

An effective intervention: limiting opioid prescribing as a means of reducing opioid analgesic misuse, and overdose deaths.

September 23, 2020

Health Literacy Practices in Primary Care Settings: Examples from the Field.

February 6, 2008

Organizational Learning from Experience in High-Hazard Industries: Problem Investigations as Off-line Reflective Practice.

March 6, 2005

A learning health system agenda for organizational approaches to enhancing occupational well-being among clinicians.

May 25, 2022

Adopting the Fall Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (TIPS) program to engage older adults in fall prevention in a nursing home.

February 17, 2021

Communication failures contributing to patient injury in anaesthesia malpractice claims.

September 1, 2021

The relationship between resident physician burnout and its’ effects on patient care, professionalism, and academic achievement: a review of the literature.

October 5, 2022

Ambulatory surgery facilities: a comprehensive review of medication error reports in Pennsylvania.

September 14, 2011

Towards an International Classification for Patient Safety.

February 4, 2009

Pointing fingers: verbosity of patient safety narratives is associated with attribution of blame.

December 8, 2021

Has the pendulum swung too far?; The impact of missed abdominal injuries in the era of nonoperative management.

September 16, 2009

Systematic review of interventions to improve safety and quality of anticoagulant prescribing for therapeutic indications for hospital inpatients

December 18, 2019

Safety considerations for IMRT.

August 10, 2011

Speaking up about traditional and professionalism-related patient safety threats: a national survey of interns and residents.

May 10, 2017

The Gift of Failure: New Approaches to Analyzing and Learning from Events and Near-Misses.

October 13, 2010

Patient Safety and the Invitational Conference on Contemporary Surgical Quality, Safety and Transparency.

December 20, 2006

Incorporating Health Information Technology Into Workflow Redesign: Request for Information Summary Report.

November 17, 2010

Heart Failure: The Decline of a Historic Transplant Program.

January 30, 2019

Factors impacting physician use of information charted by others.

January 30, 2019

When is the surgeon too old to operate?

February 13, 2019

Enhancing patient safety during hand-offs: standardized communication and teamwork using the 'SBAR' method.

August 30, 2006

Lives Lost, Lives Saved: An Updated Comparative Analysis of Avoidable Deaths at Hospitals Graded by The Leapfrog Group.

June 12, 2019

Tolerance of uncertainty and the practice of emergency medicine.

July 15, 2020

Patient Safety Papers 6.

May 2, 2012

Reminder: pay attention to the appearance of your medicines.

December 10, 2014

Best Practices for Safe Medication Administration During Anesthesia Care.

May 2, 2018

Saving Lives, Saving Money: The Imperative for Computerized Physician Order Entry in Massachusetts Hospitals.

February 27, 2008

Radiation risks of diagnostic imaging and fluoroscopy.

August 31, 2011

"Does your knee make more of a click or a clack?"; teaching "Car Talk" to new docs.

March 13, 2019

Your attention please... designing effective warnings.

September 6, 2006

Risk Prevention and Surgical Checklists.

November 14, 2012

How to Talk About Patient Safety.

April 3, 2019

Medication errors in the care transition of trauma patients

December 18, 2019

Another round of the blame game: a paralyzing criminal indictment that recklessly "overrides" just culture.

February 27, 2019

Focus on Computerized Provider Order Entry.

January 10, 2007

Assessing patients 2019 experiences with medical injury reconciliation processes: item generation for a novel survey questionnaire.

May 5, 2021

WebM&M Cases

Hold That Order

March 1, 2008

Educating for Safety.

October 5, 2011

Greater Focus on Credentialing Needed to Prevent Disqualified Providers From Delivering Patient Care.

March 13, 2019

Special Report: Quality of Care Survey.

June 20, 2007

Pediatric trainee perspectives on the decision to disclose medical errors.

March 30, 2022

Bias in the ER. Doctors suffer from the same cognitive distortions as the rest of us.

February 22, 2017

The Safety and Quality of Health Care: Where are We Now?

June 7, 2006

Medication errors associated with documented allergies.

October 15, 2008

A lost voice.

March 1, 2017

Will the COVID-19 pandemic transform infection prevention and control in surgery? Seeking leverage points for organizational learning.

January 27, 2021

Integrating adverse event reporting into a free-text mobile application used in daily workflow increases adverse event reporting by physicians.

January 8, 2020

Overview of the Environmental Scan of Primary Care-Based Effort To Reduce Readmissions.

March 27, 2019

Mounting drug shortages delay treatments for patients with bladder cancer

December 18, 2019

When missing a 'zebra' can land you in court.

March 7, 2018

Sleep and alertness in a duty-hour flexibility trial in internal medicine.

March 13, 2019

Teamwork in Healthcare.

September 23, 2015

Effect of a central call center on employee perceptions of safety culture within community pharmacies in an academic health system.

June 5, 2019

Special Issue on Medication Safety.

July 31, 2019

'Inattentional blindness': what captures your attention?

November 21, 2012

Diagnostic Excellence in the ICU: Thinking Critically and Masterfully.

December 1, 2021

How patients perceive a doctor's caring attitude.

September 24, 2008

How to master the new art of training: teamwork on the fly.

April 11, 2012

Technology, Education and Safety.

December 2, 2020

Impact of computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) on clinical pharmacy practice: a hypothesis-generating study.

October 24, 2007

Defining, estimating, and communicating overdiagnosis in cancer screening.

June 27, 2018

Hospital internet site content on patient safety and medical errors.

September 27, 2006

The prevalence of wrong level surgery among spine surgeons.

January 30, 2008

The safety of intravenous drug delivery systems: update on current issues since the 1999 Consensus Development Conference.

March 4, 2009

Diagnostic error as a result of drug-laboratory test interactions.

March 6, 2019

Learning through experience: influence of formal and informal training on medical error disclosure skills in residents.

April 19, 2017

Patient safety leader reflects on ‘To Err is Human’ report

December 11, 2019

Related Resources

Patient Safety Innovations

Risk Mitigation Using the Anesthesia Risk Alert Program: Applying a Proactive Approach With Data Review & Collaborating With a Second Practitioner

April 10, 2024

Safety and Human Performance in the Operating Room and Other Extreme Environments.

March 27, 2024

Time for prefilled syringes - everywhere.

March 13, 2024

Three quarters of preventable patient harm stems from situation awareness breakdowns: recognizing and addressing the core issue.

February 21, 2024

Handbook of Perioperative and Procedural Patient Safety.

February 7, 2024

WebM&M Cases

Syringe Swap During Regional Block: A Case of Medication Error and Recovery.

January 31, 2024

Anaesthesia clinicians' perception of safety, workload, anxiety, and stress in a remote hybrid suite compared with the operating room.

December 13, 2023

Technology, Education and Safety

November 15, 2023

Anesthesia workspaces for safe medication practices: design guidelines.

November 15, 2023

Facilitators and barriers to the implementation of surgical safety checklist (SSC): an integrative review.

November 15, 2023

Fire safety in the operating room.

October 1, 2023

Barriers and facilitators associated with the implementation of surgical safety checklists: a qualitative systematic review.

September 27, 2023

Anesthesia Risk Alert program: a proactive safety initiative.

August 30, 2023

Handling injectable medications in anaesthesia: Guidelines from the Association of Anaesthetists.

August 23, 2023

Implementation of barcode medication administration (BMCA) technology on infusion pumps in the operating rooms.

August 9, 2023

Guidelines on Human Factors in Critical Situations 2023.

August 9, 2023

Anesthesia Patient Safety Podcast.

July 12, 2023

WebM&M Cases

Hurried Team Huddle and Poor Communication: Unsafe Practice During Anesthesia for Emergency Cesarean Delivery.

June 28, 2023

Non–operating room anesthesia challenges.

June 21, 2023

Interview

In Conversation with... Susan McGrath, PhD and George Blike, MD about Surveillance Monitoring

April 26, 2023

Perspective

Surveillance Monitoring to Improve Patient Safety in Acute Hospital Care Units

April 26, 2023

Implementing human factors in anaesthesia: guidance for clinicians, departments and hospitals: Guidelines from the Difficult Airway Society and the Association of Anaesthetists.

March 1, 2023

Artificial intelligence, patient safety, and achieving the quintuple aim in anesthesiology.

February 22, 2023

Cognitive aids in the management of clinical emergencies: a systematic review.

January 18, 2023

Factors causing variation in World Health Organization surgical safety checklist effectiveness-a rapid scoping review.

December 14, 2022

WebM&M Cases

Don’t Bite Your Tongue.

December 14, 2022

WebM&M Cases

Open wider: Failure to use an interpreter results in fractured teeth and hypoxia during a simple elective operation.

December 14, 2022

Technology, Education and Safety.

December 7, 2022

Safety of anesthetic and perioperative medication practices.

November 30, 2022

A multicenter collaborative effort to reduce preventable patient harm due to retained surgical items.

November 30, 2022

See More About The Topic

Operating Room

Health Care Providers

Risk Managers

Engineers

Anesthesiology