New York’s 11 public hospitals are at the forefront of a national movement to standardize color coding of hospital wristbands to designate patient conditions, in which purple — the color of amethyst — means “Do Not Resuscitate.” Red, or ruby, indicates allergies, while yellow — call it amber — marks someone at risk for falling.
The goal is to prevent potentially dangerous mistakes, like giving the wrong food to an allergic child, or allowing a patient with balance problems to walk unescorted down a freshly waxed hallway. The drive was spurred, in part, by a notorious 2005 Pennsylvania case in which a patient nearly died because a nurse used a yellow band thinking it meant “restricted extremity” (don’t draw blood from that arm), as it did at another hospital where the nurse sometimes worked, when at this hospital it meant D.N.R.
Hospital Bracelets Face Hurdles as They Fix Hazard - NYTimes.com
Richard and I are currently attending the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. I thought I’d report on some of the interesting work we saw this week.
First, a shameless plug for research conducted at my own university. David Sharek and Mike Wogalter presented data on how clueless and careless the “wired” generation can be when it comes to computer security. Briefly, undergraduates treated real and fake “security” announcements on PC’s similarly: by clicking “ok” to whatever it asked them. My mother has personal, recent experience that this is a GREAT way to get spyware and viruses on your computer. You might think that 20 year-olds would not be so easily fooled… but then David and Mike wouldn’t have their study buzzed on: Slashdot, ScienceDaily, Reddit, and the BBC.
Second, we have a new “technical group” called Augmented Cognition. Talks in this session included two talks on using physiological markers to predict display needs (an area long pursued without as much progress as one might hope). Check out “Using physiological measures to discriminate signal detection outcome during imagery analysis” and “Biomarkers for effects of fatigue and stress on performance: EEG, P300, and heart-rate variability.”
There is much more, too much to mention individually, but I’d like to invite the readers to comment on their personal favorites from the week.
- Berka, C., Johnson, R., Whitmoyer, N., Behneman, A., & Popovic, D. (2008). Biomarkers for effects of fatigue and stress on performance: EEG, P300, and heart-rate variability.Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, CA, 192-196.
- Hale, K. S., Fuchs, S., & Axelsson, P. (2008). Using physiological measures to discriminate signal detection outcome during imagery analysis. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, CA, 182-186.
- Sharek, D., Swofford, C. & Wogalter, M. (2008). Failure to recognize fake internet popup warning messages. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, CA, 557-560.
I snapped this picture near NCSU today. Looks like the garbage workers or apartment dwellers decided to take matters into their own hands.
An old problem has hit the news again: chemicals that look too much like drinks. This story just came out in New Jersey, where six people drank tiki-torch fuel the color of apple juice.
It is an interesting problem… what SHOULD you make fuel look like? The tiki-torch fuel bottle did not fall into the Fabuloso problem of looking like a sports drink bottle*. It wasn’t being kept under the bar, like the caustic dish liquid that scarred a father and daughter in “Set Phasers on Stun.” It doesn’t taste sweet like anti-freeze.
Yet when six people all make the same mistake, in a short time span, in a wide geographic spread, are of different ages, etc., it’s safe to assume something triggered them to think it was drinkable. As the executive director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System said in the article from the Star-Ledger:
“During my 40 years in medicine, you get an occasional kid who ingests kerosene, but I have never seen this kind of cluster,” he said.”
But what was it? From looking at the bottle, I don’t have a good answer.
*Fabuloso refused to change their bottle shape but made the concession of adding a child-proof cap. As the other stories show, it’s not just kids making these errors, but the cap should at least make the user think as they try to open the “sports drink.”**
**Of course that reminds me of the time I bought a new contact lens solution and opened it to see a bright red bottle tip. “What a neat retro-looking design,” I thought before filling the contact and putting it in my eye. An hour of rinsing later, I still thought maybe I’d blinded myself.
I don’t usually post stories from Telegraph.uk, but this was a good one.
“Groundsman destroys golf course fairways with weedkiller
A golf club’s fairways were turned brown after the groundsman accidentally watered the course with industrial strength weedkiller”
The article continues HERE, with pictures.
Following signs to the Raleigh SPCA, we took a wrong turn.
From the looks of things, we were not the first to do so.
Of course, you only see these signs once you are on the wrong property. They might have avoided all troubles by putting a sign along the way that pointed to the SPCA.
