water pitcher mix ups in the hospital, how to avoid?

[Tholi]

I am looking for ideas to prevent water pitchers that have been refilled being returned to the wrong patients. Our pitchers/jugs are made with a lid that has a straw to drink out of and a separate place to pour water from. They are two separate pieces

It is not unusual that when a PCT refills a pitcher they either put the wrong lid on or give the wrong pitcher back to the patient.

We have name labels on the top and the side of the pitchers with the room numbers written on them, thus we find pitchers with two different names on them.

My suggestion of filling one at a time and returning it to the patient did not go over well because it is not "time efficient". The problem is occurring on all floors, not just one area.

I personally like the old style of pitcher that the patients did not drink from, the water was poured into a cup for the patient to drink. This way if an error was made at least the patient hadn't drank from the pitcher.

Are there water pitchers available where the top and bottom pieces cannot be separated? (Any pictures would be helpful.) At least that would take care of part of the problem of getting it right.

It is my desire to take a "leadership" role and find a way to keep this from happening. Any ideas/thoughts are appreciated.

Thank you!

[Sadala, ADN, RN]

I think I've mentioned before that I've become pretty OCD about the whole sanitation thing, but it troubles me to see a pitcher/cup come out of a room and then also to see it be taken back into the room again (even in the event that the top and bottom don't become mixed up). In other words, both aspects bother me as I just see room for spreading pathogens from space to space.

For the same reason, I don't like to see a cart with ice go into a room, come out, then go into another room. Are there plastic cups on the unit? Because I'd far prefer to take new cheap plastic cups fulls of ice in to refill the pitchers (or clean plastic bags, either way). Then those bags or cups can go directly into the trash in the pt's room. Is this just too much craziness about sanitization on my part?