Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray, and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for the Scottish Government, Sir Gregor Smith, visited our Interventional Radiology teams and the Department of Clinical Neurosciences (DCN) at the Royal Infirmary yesterday to hear about implementation of the Scan for Safety initiative.
Scan for Safety is an initiative that enables tracking of products used in delivery of patient care, using barcode scanning. This new initiative will improve patient safety due to more efficient stock control and the improved ability to monitor the performance ofmedical devices. This will also make easier to reliably trace devices used, and follow Product Safety Alerts or (worst case scenario) recalls.
As well as benefits to patient safety, the initiative is expected to lead to a significant reduction in administrative tasks, saving hours of manual tracking. The move to automation in tracking will ensure data is up to date and captured across the system effectively, reducing clinical time spent. Making these administrative tasks more efficient will provide more time for face-to-face patient care.
During his presentation, Jamie Hetherington, General Manager for Diagnostics and colleagues talked about the benefits of this programme, improving patient safety, as well as saving time and money. He also acknowledged that the success of the programme has been down to the dedication of the staff, in particular Julie MacDonald, who led on the day-to-day stock control and tracking.
The Cab Sec commented “I heard every one of these projects needs a Julie”.
