Unique identification tag(UIT): a newer innovation for improving the quality and safety in high volume cataract surgery set-ups

Session Details

Session Title: Cataract Surgery Outcomes/Practice Styles/Biometry

Session Date/Time: Monday 12/09/2016 | 14:00-16:00

Paper Time: 15:18

Venue: Auditorium C6

First Author: : B.Dey INDIA

Co Author(s): :                        

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To study the utility of a Unique Identification Tag (UIT) attached to the wrists of patients undergoing cataract surgery.

Setting:

Tertiary care eye hospital of South India

Methods:

In a tertiary care eye hospital in South India with high volume cataract set up, we devised an Unique Identification Tag (UIT) to simplify the workload. It’s a simple paper tag attached to the wrist which contains MR number, name, address & eye to be operated. We use two coloured tags. Green tag is used for those who are apparently normal, red tag for those who need special attention like monocular, patients with grave systemic diseases, complicated cataract, etc. Usually the green-tagged patients operated by juniors or senior surgeons but the red-tagged patients go to senior surgeons only.

Results:

In the year 2012-13, 31839 patients were operated with doctor-patients’ ratio of 1:636 and paramedical staff- patients’ ratio of 1:80; we had complication rate of 1.39%.

Conclusions:

In a developing country like India, where cataract backlog burden is huge but skilled man power is very less, maintaining safety and quality especially in centres with high volume surgery is always a challenge. This Unique Identification Tag (UIT) is a simple innovative way to regulate, simplify and maintain quality and safety of patients in high staff & patients’ ratio set-ups. It can lead to future innovations in this direction.

Financial Disclosure:

NONE