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Baby name change for hospital errors - True or false?

Last Updated 13 November 2015, 18:33 IST

More than 80 per cent of neonatal intensive care units, or NICUs, use temporary first names for patients — Babygirl Jackson or Babyboy Goldsmith, for example — a convention that may lead to errors in prescribing medicines. A new study has found that a simple change in this procedure can significantly reduce such errors.

The NICUs at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx instituted a new system two years ago. They started naming babies using the mother’s first name — Jennifersgirl Jackson and Karensboy Goldsmith. Researchers compared the number of wrong-patient electronic orders of medicines in the year before the change with the number in the year after. The study, in Pediatrics, included 1,58,000 orders before the change and 1,42,000 after. Overall, the new system reduced errors by 36.3 per cent.

The authors write that regulatory bodies might consider prohibiting the use of non-specific names, a simple rule that could also prevent other kinds of errors in the intensive care unit — for example, mistaking one baby’s pathology test for another’s. The lead author, Jason Adelman, patient safety officer at Montefiore, had this advice: “Parents should have the name ready, especially if you know you’re having twins or triplets. And hospitals should be encouraged to use the name and get away from the old system.”

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(Published 13 November 2015, 16:17 IST)

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