Ideas That Work: Bracelets for Anesthetics

Practical pearls from your colleagues

Part of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s (HUP) entry that won the OR Excellence Pain Management Award this year includes the placement of an alert bracelet on patients who receive intraoperative, long-acting, extended-release anesthetics.

PennMedicine, located in Philadelphia, administers bupivacaine impregnated collagen implants to some of its outpatient hernia patients.

Realizing that recently discharged patients might go to a dentist or another provider who might administer another local anesthetic, the patients now go home wearing the alert bracelets. The bracelets indicate the type of medication given, when it was administered and when the 96-hour restriction on additional local anesthetics expires, according to Ann Marie Morris, associate director of perioperative quality, safety and education at HUP.

“We were concerned that patients we sent home the same day could possibly get a local anesthetic shortly after they left and not mention that they just received one here,” says Ms. Morris. Now they can rest easy. OSM