Pro/con debate: color-coded medication labels.

Janik LS, Vender JS Grissinger M, Litman RS. APSF Newsletter. February 2019;33:72-75.

This pair of commentaries reviews the use of color-coded medications as an anesthesia safety strategy. The first article argues for implementing standard color sets to delineate drug class and use to improve medication safety. The dissenting article suggests that color-coded medications may decrease the chance of clinicians reading syringe labels carefully due to overreliance on color representation as a shortcut for reading the label.

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