10 mins.
18.6.2024
Barcodes strengthen patient safety
Text
Casper Hinds
Photo:
Andreas Bang
The regional hospital Gødstrup opened in 2022 with advanced technology, where standardisation and patient safety go hand in hand.
“It is a new technological era that we are entering with the new hospital in Gødstrup,” says hospital director Poul Michaelsen.
The operating theatre and the sterilisation centre are several hundred metres apart, but the investment in the new sterile flow ensures that the flow still functions optimally.
As something new, each instrument is labeled with a barcode, giving full overview of location and cleaning.
— The system can calculate when the instruments should enter the operating room so that the flow is ensured. Until now, this was done through phone calls and main bill, but the new system frees up time so that staff can concentrate on other things, emphasizes Poul Michaelsen.
The physical distance is long, but the digital distance has become shorter. The more knowledge you have about each instrument, the easier it is to make the right choice. What Susanne Raakilde Jakobsen, ward nurse at the sterilisation centre, experiences:
“This is an advantage for the staff, as it minimizes errors and significantly increases safety.
At the same time, it is a great help for new hires, because the system tells you what kind of instrument it is and how to handle it.
Patient safety at the forefront
In the submission, the new technology begins its journey around the hospital ensuring optimal hygiene, or as staff call it: re-treatment. In the future, when you have been in operation in the operating rooms, the used instruments end up here. Everything is scanned in by a computer with a hand scanner. Each instrument has a unique barcode that helps provide a real-time image that allows staff to solve tasks in optimal order and make the best decisions in a hectic everyday life.
- First of all, patient safety is paramount, but of course it is also a matter of time and money, says Susanne Raakilde Jakobsen:
- With the new system, we can trace far back, so we can see where a process may have gone wrong and ensure that it does not happen again. Or we can rule out that the re-treatment process is the cause of an infection in the patient.
In the submission, the new technology begins its journey around the hospital ensuring optimal hygiene, or as staff call it: re-treatment. In the future, when you have been in operation in the operating rooms, the used instruments end up here. Everything is scanned in by a computer with a hand scanner. Each instrument has a unique barcode that helps provide a real-time image that allows staff to solve tasks in optimal order and make the best decisions in a hectic everyday life.
- First of all, patient safety is paramount, but of course it is also a matter of time and money, says Susanne Raakilde Jakobsen:
- With the new system, we can trace far back, so we can see where a process may have gone wrong and ensure that it does not happen again. Or we can rule out that the re-treatment process is the cause of an infection in the patient.
GS1's standards
After scanning in the filing room, the instruments are sent for washing in the hospital's huge, floor-spaced washing machines. At the bottom of the large machine sits a small barcode. It is scanned so that the codes can be compared with the instruments that have been sent for washing.
“If someone forgets to scan in along the way, we can easily go back into the process and record where skips have been missed,” explains social and health assistant Gitte Hove.
After an hour of washing and a quarter of cooling, the instruments are scanned again to ensure proper packing.
“We need to standardize so that mistakes are not made. This is both about patient safety and efficiency,” says Poul Michaelsen.
It is GS1's standardsused as the basis for the labelling at the Regional Hospital Gødstrup.
“We need to standardize so that mistakes are not made. It is both about patient safety and efficiency. If the system doesn't have a flow, you get poor quality. That is why we must ensure that digitisation is so precise that patient safety is at the top. Here GS1 is a crucial help, says Poul Michaelsen.
A sterile pressure cooker
After the instruments have cooled down, they are packed in boxes with red lids and provided with a barcode. This ensures that the instrument kits contain the right instruments and that they are prepared so that the product delivered with a barcode matches exactly the content and quality desired for the operations.
“Here we have a good example of how the process is always secured,” says Gitte Hove.
— If there are no scans in all places along the way, we cannot be allowed to print labels, and then the process more or less stops.
To minimize the risk of infection, the instruments are packed in a room where the amount of impurities is minimized to ensure that infections and other disease transmission do not occur to the patients being operated on. After this, they are sterilized in an autoclave, a pressure cooker-like machine that removes viruses and bacteria. Once the process is complete, the autoclave confirms that the sterility requirements have been met.
Fewer cancellations
Before materials reach the packing room, staff must go through compartments resembling human sluices, with different air pressures to ensure sterility. In the packing room, each individual part is scanned and packaged according to the instructions of the system before storing the sterilized instruments in the sterile repository until they are needed.
“It is not possible to book the instruments if they are not ready, and therefore patients do not get on the operating table until everything is ready. Until now, the instruments have sometimes not been fully sterilized, even if the patient had shown up for the surgery, but the new system will reduce cancellations, says Susanne Raakilde Jakobsen.
Many instruments are not born with barcodes, and therefore still have to be marked manually with GS1 barcodes, which requires extra time.
- It depends a lot on the material and the size of the instruments, whether they are easy to scan, says Gitte Hove.
- It depends on the material and size, whether the instruments are easy to scan. There are also many places the barcodes can hide. After all, the advantage is that the barcodes do the work that we have had to do in our heads until now.
