A new pathology labelling system is now being trailed in the Emergency Department at Bendigo Health thanks to funds provided through Bendigo Health Foundation.
Referred to as PEBBLE (Pathology Electronic Barcode Blood Labelling Equipment) the project involves the printing of ‘on demand’ patient labels at the patient’s bedside, at the time the specimen/s are collection. It is hoped that this will make specimen collection safer for patients by reducing the:
- risk of the wrong patient’s details being affixed to specimens,
- risk of patient’s receiving unnecessary treatment, or in some cases the risk transfusing of the wrong blood,
- need to unnecessarily re-bleed patients and by:
- including the clearly printed name of the collector as well as the time and date of collection, which are mandatory inclusions thereby decreasing the number of rejected specimens, decreasing the overall number of incorrectly labelled pathology samples.
The equipment also involves the electronic tracking of blood components sent via the pneumatic tube system (PTS) from pathology to one of the two PTS stations in ED. As well as electronically track the blood components from either of the ED PTS stations to pathology, if the blood component need to be returned. It is expected that this will help to reduce blood component wastage.
Staff have reported that the label printing is not only easy to use, but also accurate and really fast. In ED, when every second counts, this is really important factor.
This is a result of a seven years of planning and research and an important piece of equipment we are proud to fund.
This project would not have moved from the planning and research phase to the project activation phase without the funding and support of the Bendigo Health Foundation.
