Hospitals in Pennsylvania and across the country are banding together in a voluntary effort to standardize the meanings of color-coded wristbands used in hospitals and other health care organizations. The purpose of color-coded armbands is to provide consistency across health care facilities — to improve caregiver recognition and communication and to reduce the risk of error when different meanings are attached to different colors in different hospitals.
In keeping with this safety effort, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center on March 18 began implementing a series of standardized color-coded wristbands to signify a patient’s medical status or condition. Color-coded wristbands provide visual cues about a patient’s clinical status or medical condition. Hospitals across the United States are concerned about the potential for mistakes or errors related to color-coded armbands that are not standardized across facilities.
Patients will be asked to remove any social cause wristbands while being treated at the Medical Center so they are not confused with the color-coded safety wristbands. For instance, a social cause purple wristband is worn to bring awareness to Alzheimer’s disease, but a purple wristband used in the hospital means that the patient has indicated that he/she does not want to be resuscitated. If a person wearing a purple social cause wristband were to experience a cardiac arrest while hospitalized, staff could mistakenly interpret the wristband to mean that the patient does not want to be resuscitated, when this is may not be the case.
These color-coded wristbands will remain in place at the time of discharge. The list below presents the meaning of each wristband.
Band Color- Communicates
Red - Allergy
Yellow - Fall Risk
Green Latex - Allergy
Purple Comfort - Care Only (DNR)
Pink - Restricted Extremity
Neon Yellow - Intraosseous (pre-hospital)
For more information about this initiative, please go to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority Web site at www.psa.state.pa.us.