Medication administration ranks as one of the most challenging patient safety issues for healthcare organizations. And when dispensing medications, that process often includes IV therapy. In fact, an estimated 90 percent of hospitalized patients in the U.S. receive an IV therapy for medications and other fluids at some point during their stay. But even with technology such as smart pumps, medication dispensing errors associated with infusions are common. To illustrate, a multisite study conducted by Schnock et. al. found 60% of infusions contained one or more errors and nearly two thirds of those errors occurred when labeling protocols were violated. It’s one of the reasons why labeling IV tubing is so important.

Medical devices enable healthcare professionals to conduct life saving procedures. But, not when those devices are out of service or not working for any reason. Although it’s impossible to achieve 100% uptime, the inspection, maintenance and safety steps biomedical clinical engineering departments support are essential to properly functioning medical devices. And the medical device labeling they perform when conducting inspections provide key data points that enable safe operating procedures.