ICU Nurses Offered Tool to Prevent Deadly Medication Mistakes

GUERNEVILLE, Calif., Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Hospital Intensive Care Units are among the most expensive costs in the U.S. health care industry. Intensive Care Units represent 10% of acute care beds, costing billions of dollars annually.

Patients in ICU areas are typically very ill; their problems can be complex with a large range of acute illnesses and preexisting conditions present. Intensive Care Unit patients are often the sickest of the critically sick patients.

The majority of injurious or deadly adverse drug events or medication errors were related to errors programming IV pumps, IV equipment, misread drug packaging, incorrect medication labeling and miscommunication between health care professionals - doctors and pharmacists.

ICU medication errors are very costly - in lives and dollars.

ICU patients receiving vasoactive drugs such as dopamine, dobutamine, and other powerful vasoactive drugs must be kept hemodynamically stable.

ICU nurses are tasked with the control of lifesaving but potentially lethal vasoactive drugs. In hospitals around the globe nurses are administering vasoactive drugs with the constant risk of potential adverse drug reactions and medication errors.

Vasoactive drugs are very potent and are typically administered through an infusion pump. ICU patients can be receiving multiple medications with multiple IV drips to maintain hemodynamic stability. These vasoactive drugs offer a pharmacological or mechanical support to maintain a normal blood pressure and adequate cardiac output.

The Dangers of Multiple Medications in ICU

With so many different medications being delivered through multiple IV lines it becomes necessary for nurses to use tape or labels on the I.V. lines at several points to quickly check or discontinue an intravenous infusion line in an emergency.

Pharmacists, doctors and nurses involved with prescribing and administering vasoactive drugs all play a role in patient safety.

ColorSafe IV Lines(TM) infusion sets feature color-coded tubing / color-coded labeling for easy identification and verification by health care professionals of various intravenous medications with the goal of minimizing the risk of accidental drug administration errors. ColorSafe IV Lines help hospitals to improve safety in intravenous medication administration.

In combination with matching colored labels, the color-coded tubing will make it faster and easier for health care professionals to ensure that patients receive the correct type and dose of medication. By adding ColorSafe IV lines for the second, third or more IV lines, the task of distinguishing lines becomes simple, and expedites the procedure. The health care professional can easily trace the line from the patient to the IV bag with the use of a color tinted IV line. By using ColorSafe IV Lines, the potential for injecting medication into the wrong line, or hanging a bag onto the wrong line, is reduced.

IV errors can often be fatal because there are numerous IV drugs that are very high-risk drugs with deadly side effects if given inappropriately or in incorrect dosage. In addition speed is an issue; the medication goes directly into the bloodstream and is thus available for rapid effect on the body. This means there is little margin for a mistake before a tragic adverse drug event occurs to the patient.

The ColorSafe IV infusion product line will initially feature color-coded tubing in six (6) standard colors - red, green, orange, blue, purple and yellow.

Note: Please click the photolink below to view where nurses have made labels for the different IV drips - dopamine, dobutamine, etc. and the large orange sticker these nurses use to identify where to push drugs.

ColorSafe IV Lines will be available in the United States during the first quarter of 2010.

Photo: Clear IV Intravenous Lines are indistinguishable from one another. In a typical Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit post-transplant patient, it takes two nurses nearly fifteen minutes to untangle the IV lines on a patient coming from the surgery suite.
http://www.ereleases.com/pr/tangled-lines.jpg

ColorSafe brochure:
http://www.ereleases.com/pr/ColorSafe-IV-Lines.pdf

    Contact:

    Evan Lipstein
    V.P. Marketing
    888-207-9404 or
    212-688-5600
    http://www.colorsafeivlines.com

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