What is an identity crisis?

The answers can be varied. Maybe it’s that time in junior high when a kid who loves music and football is trying to figure out if he wants to be on the field for the game or the halftime show. Maybe it’s when a woman is trying not to lose herself in just being a mom. Maybe it’s after retirement when a lifelong worker no longer knows how to introduce himself.

Whenever it hits, an identity crisis describes a period when people struggle to nail down exactly who they want to be.

What it isn’t is an excuse for mixing up patients.

Think tank RAND Corp., used that term — identity crisis — as the title of a 2008 study. It found that creating a unique patient ID for every American could reduce medical errors and even make health care more efficient. It’s pithy. It made the point that there was a problem and it involved identification.

But 17 years later, it’s clear we need to work on improving the basic identification of patients.

On Friday, Rae Corrado walked into a UPMC Mercy hospital room looking for her mother. She found another woman entirely. A nurse said it was Corrado’s mother, Gloria. Corrado said the woman’s ID bracelet had her mother’s name. It took hours to resolve the situation. Corrado still doesn’t know who the other woman was.

Calling this a mix-up seems dismissive. Brendan Lupetin, a Pittsburgh malpractice attorney, called it a no-harm, no-foul situation. Confusing one patient for another isn’t even really tracked unless something detrimental happens.

The problem: misidentification opens the door to something detrimental happening.

The reason federal law guards patient privacy is because of how important the information is. Medical care can be like a scavenger hunt. Some of the workers who see you at the hospital, say a phlebotomist or a nurse, likely have never treated you before. In some ways, that leaves patients vulnerable. It all boils down to whether the number on the chart is matched to the right person.

Without that, the wrong medication could be provided. Allergies could be missed. The wrong surgery could be performed.

One way to prevent that is verbal. Nurses and other caregivers are constantly examining charts, looking at wristbands and still asking “Can you tell me your name and birth date?” But not everyone can answer, whether because they are too young, too old or have a condition that prevents it.

A patient’s identity is not trial and error. A near-miss might not be fatal, but dismissing it with a sigh focuses on the wrong thing. A mistake was made, even if it didn’t have serious consequences.

Corrado’s mother is fine. But just because this identity crisis was averted doesn’t mean there should not be a continued effort to improve systems across the health care landscape.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)