safety tips?

[IHeartPeds87]

Hi everyone! New nurse here. So I was talking to a fellow nurse friend about a situation: I thought it was weird and unsafe that both long acting and short acting insulin have the same color/size needles at my facility. She told me a story about a nurse who accidentally gave 100 units of short acting insulin....super scary stuff....but I can understand how that might happen since we give so much heparin (though at my facility atleast the heparin syringes are a different color). My friend gave me this piece of advice that I thought was great: draw up insulin in the medication room and draw up heparin in the patient's room...while this obvi won't solve the different type of insulins looking similar conundrum it may help prevent a heparin/insulin mix up.

I was thinking....any other tips like this that you have developed over the years/that you know of that help keep your patient's safe? The more specific the better!

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Does the facility's policy require that 2 nurses check insulin? Many do, and even if they don't require it, perhaps nurses on their own could buddy up to double check insulin type and dose.