Comment Re:Thinking out of the box (Score 3, Interesting) 520
Totally agree with you. I'm a cardiologist, and this article just is full of alarmist oversimplification. Leaders in this industry are not complete idiots, and currently all of the connectors that they describe ARE incompatible (except, as you note, the intrathecal, as it is often essentially stock IV tubing, but ports are covered with a big warning / sticker.)
Making "special" tubing, as the article glosses over, may make the problem worse (e.g. situation:
Nurse: Quick, we need an IV in this patient in the ER, his pressure is low.
Tech: We don't have any IV tubing in this bay, but there is some black intrathecal tubing.
Nurse: Let's just use that for now (a tube is a tube) for the IV and change it later. It is an emergency.
Tech: Ok.
5 minutes later, somebody comes along with spinal anesthetic, and now that it is "safe" with a color-coded tube, doesn't trace the tube to the insertion and just injects it into the patient.)
All safety legislation / efforts have consequences, and may not actually make people safer. Here, the situations described are *EXTREMELY RARE*, and frankly, likely due to negligence (I don't have exact details for each instance, but likely the person did not trace the tube, or jury-rigged incompatible connectors together.) Safety cabling may lead to a false sense of security, and current connectors are already incompatible. There is no shortcut or excuse for constant vigilance.