Entertainment Vs. Hospital
Hospital Wristbands
Overview
Hospital wristbands often referred to as Patient ID bands have been around for decades. They were refined in 1956 by Walter Mosher Jnr who developed a one piece wristband & helped set up a ompany PDC to promote his invention.
In 1972 PDC developed the Visaband range of pvc plastic wristbands in response to customers who wanted to use wristbands outside the medical field. Hospital ID bands have evolved in a slower fashion to those in Entertainment areas, but certain wristband styles are used in both sectors.
I'll refer to Hospital wristbands as ID bands for the sake of differentiation from those of Entertainment wristbands. ID bands were exactly that, they comprised a component that helped identify a hospital patient. The most common method of ID is a patient insert card, where the patients details are recorded on the insert card which was then inserted into the patients ID band. The insert cards were in a perforated booklet & generally there were 300 inserts per box of 250.
Hospital Wristband
Hospital ID bands had a seamless pocket on the front & the insert card slid into the back of the ID band where the patients details could be read from the front. When the ID band was placed on the patients wrist, the curvature of the band would help seal the entry point of the insert card & keep the details watertight, this solution has proven over time not to be 100% effective & the longer a patient is in hospital the more likely the insert card will get wet. Improvements have taken place with the application of the wristbands & for many years until the mid 1980's the tail of the ID band was fed through a slot near the snap fastener, this was found to be rather cumbersome & replaced with a side style snap fastener, where the ID band strap was laid over the male part of the clip & then the female part of the clip was folded over to secure the ID band in place.
Wristbands for the Entertainment area required a different solution & security became a driving force. Hospital ID bands were made from softer plastic & could be stretched & subsequently transferred from person to person, additionally the most common snaps could be prised open & the wristband transferred. A different solution was required & that brought about the development of wristbands developed specifically for the Entertainment sector, the wristbands were made from PVC in the shape of Hospital ID Bands but they contained a tough non stretch inner layer & a slightly different clip that was designed to break if an attempt was made to force it open & the male part of the clip became a little vaselike in shape, which makes it difficult to defeat. This clip has been adopted with many Hospital ID Bands since that time.
A wide variety of colours was introduced with the Entertainment wristbands including White, Light Pink, Blue, Yellow, Red, Orange, Light Blue, Black, Kelly Green, Lavender, Goldenrod, Gray, Maroon, Day Glow Orange, Purple, Aquamarine, Peach, Day Glow Pink, Day Glow Green, Tan & Coffee.
Hospital ID Bands favoured Clear & White for Adults, Red for Allergy warnings & Clear, White, Light Pink & Light Blue for Infants. Recently Hospitals have introduced coloured wristbands for specific departments & categories from Fall Risks to Lymphoedema Alerts, it has become so widespread in the USA & UK there have been calls to standardise colours for specific conditions, as problems were occuring with staff going from Hospital to Hospital & a patients special condition being allocated a certain colour ID band in one Hospital & the same condition allocated a different colour ID Band at the next, with subsequent patient treatment & medication errors.
Both Hospital & Entertainment sectors have developed their own solutions & each can now offer a wide variety of solutions in addition to the standard wristbands listed here.