In part 4 of our interview with Dr Richard Jones we ask his views on the patients perspective on wristbands.
There is an issue with wristbands that sometimes patients feel they’re a bit de-humanising, particularly with barcodes on. But patients are now becoming aware of the safety issues themselves and confidence in the system depends on the quality of the whole service. Their expectation in the supermarket is that they will see a barcode or their expectation in other walks of life is that they would have positive identification, when they’re in a safety critical environment like a hospital then I think they’re becoming accepting of the need to have positive ID. It also lends quality to the whole sense of the organisation if things are done professionally and properly and the idea of a wristband that can’t be read, that’s been hand written and it’s loose or falling off, it just doesn’t lend you the confidence that the system knows what it’s doing. So I think that patients, although there are concerns about the de-humanisation, are actually much more accepting now of seeing things done properly and the safety case and the quality case is overwhelming.
Please feel free to add your comments to any of the items you see, we would be delighted to see some debate on the site and to hear your opinion.