I have been an RN on 14 Moffitt for over five years and have participated in many code situations. When a code situation occurs, many of the time blood is collected for STAT labs and ran down to the 5th floor to be processed. If you've even seen a code cart, there is a drawer with all specimen containers and lab bags.

The Problem

    (1) Each unit is stocked with two different speciment bags; one for labs to be processed stardard, & the other (red) STAT bag.The bags inside the code cart are your standard specimen bags, NOT the red STAT bags.

    (2) Despite labs being sent down in a STAT red bag, lab specimens have accidentally misplaced or thrown away and precious time is wasted, waiting for results that are not being processed. In the last year, this has happened on more than one occassion and it could literally mean the difference between life and death in terms of emergency treatment for a patient.

My Solution

    Stock ALL code carts, pediatric and adult, with blue-colored specimen bags. When we rolled out the red-STAT bags for AM lab collection, nurses and phlebotomist use the different colors effectively. This way, when labs are taken down to the 5th floor lab to be processed, the blue-colored bags would indicate that staff need to process that particular specimen immediately and there would be no opportunity for error.