Usually a lurker, but nontheless long-time member of Lactnet, I have a special request of the Lactnet Community. I checked the Archives for this topic, but amazingly enough, I could not find any discussions since 1999. Seems like the timing might be right for an update!

BACKGROUND:
We are in the midst of a swirling discussion at my work on whether or not a 2nd verifier signature is required in the chart before providing expressed breast milk to hospitalized infants. Essentially, we are doing the same thing as is done in surgery with their Surgical Time-Out. We are fine-tuning our practice for giving EBM to infants: pausing to verify correct milk and correct infant before giving the feeding, and whether or not to document this and if so, how. 

THE QUESTIONS:
The questions raised are whether a second signature is required at all, whether the 2nd verifier signature is required both at time of preparation as well as at time of feeding or only at time of feeding, can the baby's assigned nurse (the one prepping and giving the milk) enter the 2nd verifier's name or does the 2nd verifier have to enter their own name (we are computerized so this is a bigger deal than you may think), does one of the two verifiers have to be an RN, and what official references are available for the process. A corollary discussion is what is the procedure when the wrong milk is given.

SHORT ONLINE SURVEY
If you are able to contribute to this discussion, please DO NOT REPLY within Lactnet at this time, but rather surf on over to Survey Monkey (URL follows) to answer a short 10-question survey, "Safe Practices for EBM: Time-Out Verification." You can remain anonymous, but I am asking for City and State/Country for some measure of data validation purposes only. The survey will be available for 2 weeks through February 23. 

SURVEY WEB ADDRESS
To participate in this short survey, please surf on over to (watch word wrap):
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=xvZYIOkj4qk33aEJtZJrEQ_3d_3d

REPORTING OF FINDINGS
By mid-March, I will summarize the answers and report the findings back to Lactnet on what practices we are all doing. At that time, a discussion within Lactnet might be interesting. If I receive enough information, I may submit our responses to JHL as a Best Practice article.

If you have questions, please contact me personally at my email address in the header of this posting. Thank you for your interest in providing Safe Practice with EBM.

Katharine West, MPH, MSN, RN, CNS
Covina, CA

 

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Katharine West
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