If you ask any healthcare provider about the most effective ways to improve patient safety, it’s highly unlikely that you would hear him or her say, “I’d like to know less about my patients before I treat them.”

Although physicians pledge to “first do no harm,” in practice, adverse events in hospitals are common and frequently preventable. In fact, Bartlett et al. (2008) found that up to 50% of adverse events in hospitals are preventable.

Clinicians and healthcare organizations recognize that the safety and quality of care is improved by recording and updating a complete list of medications and supplements for every patient at admission, during transfers while in the hospital, and at discharge.

In today’s healthcare environment, a broad team of professionals should engage in the quest to improve patient safety through identifying and discussing the successes and failures that lead to organizational learning.

Barcode technology has long been hailed as an effective tool in the struggle to improve patient safety. The risks and advantages offered by barcodes have been well known for a decade or more (Leape et al., 1995; Brennan et al., 1991; Low & Belcher, 2002). The concept of barcodes goes back to 1948, and the first scanner was installed in a Cincinnati Kroger grocery store in 1972 (Reynolds, n.d.).

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