In the healthcare industry, the safety of patients, staff and visitors must be paramount at all times, which is why personalised identity cards are now becoming essential. These small pieces of plastic can play a huge role in identifying who people are and ensuring the best levels of care and safety are adhered to at all times.
Personalised ID cards can serve more than one purpose, and especially in the healthcare sector they can have a number of very practical benefits. Here, we take a look at ID cards and their uses in order to find the most effective ways that they can be used within the healthcare industry.
Visual security
The most obvious purpose of an ID card is to make it much easier to identify the person who is wearing it. For this reason, most identity cards will include a clear and recent photo, the name and job title of the person, as well as select other information such as a date of birth, the department that they work in, how long the card is valid for and when the individual started working for the provider.
This is something that is commonly issued to healthcare staff but can also be given to residential patients and visitors. This means that everyone is easily identifiable, ensuring no-one is there who should not be.
Access control
In any healthcare setting, you will want to restrict who can access certain parts of it, and ID cards can play a huge role in this. You need to ensure that patients are protected, and that medication and important equipment is kept safely out of reach, so it is important to employ the highest security measures.
Healthcare ID cards can be used as access control cards, meaning that when they are scanned or swiped against a door, they will only be given access if they have the correct clearance. This not only ensures that the right people gain access to an area, but also that there is a log of the times and dates that everyone came and went, ensuring that this can be checked if an incident occurs.
Correct personnel
In a healthcare setting, situations can change very quickly, and help is often needed in a hurry. By wearing an identity card, it is easy to find a member of staff who is able to help in an emergency by identifying job roles and departments. This means patients can receive urgent care much more quickly and outcomes can be greatly improved. It also means that if a patient is taken ill unexpectedly, any staff member can identify who they are, where they are from and be able to reach the causes and background of the problem more quickly.
Avoid errors
When identity cards are issued as standard, it can help to minimise any errors that might occur. In order to do their jobs to the best of their abilities, healthcare professionals need access to accurate medical records without any kind of delay, and ID cards can help with this.
By being able to identify a patient properly, it means that their records can not only be checked for information but can be updated correctly too. It also ensures that biological specimens are collected and labelled properly as well as being sent to the right place. Wrongly identifying a patient can mean they are given the wrong type of care, which is not only an inconvenience, but can also have some devastating consequences.
Some cards can not only display information, but to ensure data protection laws are adhered to, they can be scanned to give the healthcare professional instant access to all of their details. This makes the process much quicker, but can also avoid inputting errors, so that only the right patient records are available.
By putting in place a system that ensures every patient can be easily identified no matter how many different members of staff that they see, their records will always be full and complete, and they can receive the best possible care at any given time.
Continuity of service
If a patient is receiving long term care of any sort, then there will be a lot of paperwork to keep on top of and a lot of records to be updated. By using ID cards to ensure that all patients are correctly identified, every healthcare provider that they come into contact with can find it much easier to check their records in order to create the best care plan for the individual, but also update their records for the next person that they see.
As ID cards can contain personal details such as a date or birth, telephone numbers, their NHS number and even a QR code, it is much easier to ensure that records are accessed and updated correctly, and continuity of care can be the best it could possibly be.
Less counterfeiting
Unfortunately, there are always some people who wish to do harm or cause problems, and they will go to all sorts of lengths to achieve this, including falsely claiming an identity. They might have been able to state a different name or produce forged papers, but it is much harder to create a counterfeit identity card.
This is because many of them contain some unique patient and staff identifiers, including making use of biometric identification systems which can capture things such as fingerprints, scans of the iris and facial recognition. This makes it much harder for anyone to claim a different identity, ensuring that safety and security is always maximised.
Identity cards have long been thought of as just another form of photo ID, but they are actually much more than that. They are now essential throughout the healthcare industry as they have so many different uses and benefits. These healthcare ID cards can therefore be very important in ensuring the safety and wellbeing of everyone in a healthcare setting, as well as ensuring that the care that is given is as good as it can possibly be at all times.
Get your Healthcare ID Cards now!
ID cards are very beneficial for the healthcare sector, as well as many others, so why not purchase yours today? We can also offer healthcare lanyards which also offer numerous advantages within healthcare. For any further information, you can get in touch with our team today to find out more!