Mistakes Waiting To Happen!

on October 12, 2012 at 9:49 am

The printed patient meal ticket is our tool to provide the patient with the food items that have been carefully selected for them or they have eagerly chosen. Not receiving a food item that is on their meal ticket can be quite disappointing and can affect your satisfaction scores negatively.

Tray accuracy is very important and it makes a difference on how the meal ticket looks when staff read them to assemble the patient meal tray. So what can you do to ensure this doesn’t happen?

Here are some tips you should consider about the printed patient meal ticket:

Font size and type: Make sure this is easy to read and big enough for staff to read.
Food item organization: Ensure that like food items are located together on the meal ticket i.e. all beverages are in one area, all entrée items are together. Staff will then only need to look at the one area.
Cell setup or tray line station set up: Ensure that your cell or trayline set up corresponds with how you have “organized” the ticket.
Wording of food items: Make sure that food items are simple and easy to read for staff and don’t cause confusion. An example is “Splenda Sugar Substitute” and “Coffee Creamer”. Both of these food items have other food items within their name. A staff member may look at Splenda Sugar substitute” and give a sugar by mistake. Make it simple it should only read “Splenda. The same is true with the “Coffee Creamer” a coffee may be given or a creamer may be given, make it simple.
Supplements: The variety of supplements provided to patients these days can be confusing so coming up with a good system for labeling the supplement and printing it on the meal ticket is important. If you really want to eliminate errors you could code each supplement i.e. 125ml vanilla ensure is S4, 125ml chocolate ensure is S5. When it’s portioned out the label can be placed on it and it will include the name (so nursing can verify it’s the correct supplement) and the code. When staff are then picking the food item to place it on the meal tray they only need to look at the code not the full name. Brilliant!
Double of a food item: If a patient is to receive 2 Sugars, it would make sense to put the 2 before the word Sugar. It would also be appropriate to make that 2 larger, maybe you want to bold it 2, and maybe even put some brackets around it so it’s not missed. (2)
New Employees: When a new employee starts provide them with a printed copy of all the food items that they may see on a printed meal ticket so they can familiarize themselves and ask questions prior to actually doing the task.
Highlight special items: If you have special notes or considerations for a meal tray it’s important that you possibly highlight them using a colorful highlighter. This is something that a diet clerk can do to help ensure it doesn’t get missed.

By implementing a few of these printed meal ticket tips your tray errors will decrease and your patient meal satisfaction scores will increase. You will also see your meal tray assembly times decrease as the simple, organized approach will speed up tray assembly.

You may need to consult your nutritional software representatives to inquire about making some of the above changes.

Good Luck!