Master's in anesthesia student Macy Urig earns APSF award for drug safety proposal

Macy Urig, an anesthesiologist assistant student in Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Master of Science in Anesthesia program in Austin, Texas, recently won the 2025 Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) Trainee Quality Improvement/Patient Safety (TQI/PS) Recognition Program Award for her submission titled “Standardization of Drug Vial and Tab Colors.”

Urig’s idea to standardize colors for drug vials and tabs in operating room carts addresses a common medical error: drugs accidentally getting swapped due to looking and sounding alike. Urig experienced how easy an error like this is to make when she discovered that medications that usually had blue tabs had changed to green tabs instead, which looked similar to a very different, concentrated medication—a small difference that could have led to a fatal mistake if she hadn’t noticed the discrepancy. 

“Setting up a standardization of colors for drug vials and tabs would protect the patient and the providers who deliver care immensely,” Urig said in her APSF video submission. “Anesthesia is the only profession that prescribes, prepares, dispenses, administers, documents and monitors a patient whilst giving a drug.”

Using color to differentiate—such as knowing to go on green and stop on red—is a common practice used around the world that could provide another fail-safe for anesthesiologists. 

“This award means being one step closer to safer anesthesia, and that is my ultimate goal ... keeping patients safe during their most vulnerable moments,” shared Urig. “By partnering with vendors nationwide through the APSF network, my goal of achieving true standardization moves one step closer to becoming a reality.”