New organ package labels available

Published on: Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Under direction of the OPTN/UNOS OPO Committee, a new set of labels has been designed for packaging and transporting organs. The new labels are intended to reduce potential packaging/labeling errors by:

• providing better visual identification of individual organ packages
• ensuring labels contain essential and currently required information
• allowing more documentation for double-checking and future reference

The large, orange outermost label is designed for use with a color-coded, organ-specific label that has a tear-away carbon copy that can be attached to the patient's chart. Each organ will also have a specific inner packaging label. While information such as blood type and UNOS ID number will be included on all labels, the organ-specific labels will also contain information essential to that organ type.