Centralized breastmilk handling and bar code scanning improve safety and reduce breastmilk administration errors

Area of Science:

• Neonatal care
• Hospital quality improvement
• Patient safety

Background:

• Safe handling and preparation of breast milk are critical in hospital settings.
• Potential risks include contamination during handling/fortification and misadministration.
• Current practices may not adequately address these risks until issues arise.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of centralized breast milk handling and bar code scanning on breast milk administration errors.
• To assess the effectiveness of these interventions in improving patient safety.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of centralized breast milk handling in two phases.
• Introduction of breast milk bar code scanning for improved identification and tracking.
• Monitoring of breast milk administration errors and near misses.

Main Results:

• Breast milk administration errors decreased to zero following process changes.
• Bar code scanning identified 55 prevented instances of feeding the wrong breast milk to the wrong patient.
• Bar code scanning identified 127 prevented instances of feeding expired breast milk.

Conclusions:

• Centralized breast milk handling and bar code scanning are effective strategies to enhance patient safety.
• These systems significantly reduce breast milk administration errors and prevent near misses.
• Findings support current recommendations for standardized breast milk identification and handling systems.