An evidence summary inspired by safety discussions held at the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s Safety Summit

Why is correct patient identification important? The failure to correctly identify patients continues to result in medication errors, transfusion errors, testing errors, wrong person procedures, and the discharge of infants to the wrong families. The main areas where patient misidentification can occur include drug administration, phlebotomy, blood transfusions, and surgical interventions.

Date of publication: Sept 2017