I’ve been thinking about Sarah Palin, Tina Fey, hospital admitting, and positive patient ID. It looks likes Tina Fey’s role as Sarah Palin has finally entered hiatus. However, don’t be surprised if Saturday Night Live flies Sarah from Anchorage...

I’ve been thinking about Old Glory, Cuba, RFID chips, and bar codes entering the third dimension. Whether you voted for John McCain or Barack Obama, I think you have to admit we are blessed in these United States. Our ballots had two pretty good...

I’ve been thinking about Europeans, Gandhi, Warhol, and me. Last week I had the pleasure of delivering the keynote address at GS1’s Bedside Scanning Conference in Bern, Switzerland. I can’t report much from the meeting as the other lectures were...

I’ve been thinking about churches, hospitals, Crocs®, and dogs. I spent the first half of my career as a minister. One Sunday a visitor complained that the people were unfriendly. Turns out the unfriendly people he was sitting next to were also...

I’ve been thinking about booze, drugs, frogs, nails, and leaping to conclusions. When I was in college, a professor gave our class a lesson in logic. On Monday evening a man drank enough gin and tonic that he ended up talking loudly, slurring his...

What to make of the BCMA workarounds study -July 2008 I’ve been thinking about thirty-one, body mass index, automobile restraints, and how hospitals should not do bar coding at the point of care. I dropped by Baskin Robbins the other day....

I’ve been thinking about physicians, bar coding, and WIIFM? Recently, while pondering why the physician community has been seemingly immune to the bar-coding-at-the-point-of-care (BPOC) bug, I had an idea. Maybe it’s because they’ve been dialed...

I’ve been thinking about nurses, horses, guns, and hugs. We all were infuriated when we read about the man last March who walked into a Georgia hospital and shot a nurse he blamed for his mother’s death. How could anyone do such a thing? Then I...

I’ve been thinking about the power of “un” for analyzing, selecting, implementing, and using patient-safety technologies wisely. It all begins with understanding the relative value of addressing one point of risk before another. For example, six...

I’ve been thinking about politics, comics, and bedside scanners. Hospital bar-coding initiatives involve numerous decisions. None are more controversial than what type of data-collection scanners nurses will take to points of care. As intensely...