MED Zone earns hospital patient safety award

By Maj. Laura FowleMay 22, 2014

MED Zone earns hospital patient safety award
Capt. Angela Green, charge nurse, prepares medication in the Medical Surgical Ward's enclosed medication storage and preparation area. Green wears the orange belt, signaling others that she is in "the MED zone," and should not be distracted until she... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

The hospital's patient safety department's work on "the MED Zone," an initiative designed to decrease medication related errors, has earned the National Patient Safety Foundation's 2014 Stand Up for Patient Safety Award.

The award recognizes an organization's successful implementation of an outstanding patient safety initiative that was led by, or created by, mid-level management.

"The MED Zone," also known as the "Must Eliminate Distractions" zone initiative, consists of two elements.

First, nursing staff has an enclosed medication storage and preparation area where they can go into to prepare medications for the patients, closing a door behind them to cut down on distractions.

Second, Nurses also physically wear an orange belt slung diagonally across their bodies during the medication preparation and administration time for the purpose of alerting others that they are in "the zone" and should not be distracted until they are completed with medication administration tasks.

This initiative was instituted as a performance improvement process using data taken from other military and civilian facilities that use similar programs.

Working as a team, staff nurses on the medical surgical ward, the clinical nurse officer in charge, and the patient safety nurse wrote the policy and rolled out the process on the hospital's medical surgical ward in back in 2012.

The process was tested for three months while data from patient safety reports was collected.

At the end of the three month time period, the medication administration rate showed a significant decrease in medication related errors.

The program stayed in place within the ward and additional data was collected every 90 days for 12 months, when results showed a 70 percent decrease in medication related errors.

Following the success of the policy on the medical surgical ward, the hospital safety committee presented the data to the command and it was instituted organization wide in the summer of 2013.

(Editor's note: Fowle is the clinical nurse officer in charge of the Medical/Surgical Unit at General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital.)

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