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More hospitals are adopting the use of color-coded wristbands for patients in an effort to improve safety by alerting anyone nearby that the person is a fall risk, for instance, or to provide quick recognition that the patient has a penicillin allergy or even a do-not-resuscitate order. But now there are growing concerns that the wristbands can violate the patient's confidentiality by displaying private information to anyone who sees the wristband.
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Authority figures in health care have the potential to influence whether deviation is normalized, notes John Banja, PhD, assistant director for health sciences and clinical ethics at Emory University in Atlanta.
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Never assume that all sex offenders are the same, cautions Michael Fogel, PsyD, a forensic psychologist at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Doing so will lead you to either overreact to some patients who pose little harm or underreact to those who truly pose a risk to others.
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As the evidence mounts that patients and long-term care residents can be threatened by the presence of sex offenders in their facilities, some communities are responding with efforts to protect the vulnerable.
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Health care facilities see a wide array of different types of people admitted for care, and not all of them will be the type you want to take home for dinner. Convicted sex offenders get sick and need long-term care just like everyone else, and that means you must be ready to respond when they are admitted to your facility.
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News: A middle-aged man was suffering from a fever, facial swelling and redness, and nasal congestion. After consulting with his regular family doctor and two other doctors, the man was diagnosed with viral influenza and a mild drug reaction. When the man's symptoms persisted and his eyes began bleeding, however, the family doctor finally realized that his patient was suffering from an eye infection.
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Responding to concerns that some health care providers would not have enough time to comply, the Federal Trade Commission is moving the deadline for its so-called Red Flags Rule to May 1, 2009, six months later than originally planned.
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The American Hospital Association (AHA) in Washington, DC, is urging the health care community to adopt a standardized color scheme for patient wristbands in order to avoid dangerous confusion about what the wristbands mean from one facility to another.
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It is human nature to take shortcuts or ignore the burdensome steps sometimes involved in doing a task the right way, and when there is no negative consequence, the deviation can be reinforced.
