LOS ANGELES??I think we?ll be saving lives,? said actor Dennis Quaid in a press conference last Tuesday. The press con was called to expound on the hospital bedside bar-code system that Dennis and his wife Kimberly are proposing, to prevent more medical mishaps such as what happened to their twin babies when they were born in November last year. Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace Quaid had to fight for their lives after they were mistakenly given an overdose of a blood-thinning drug.

America?s medical experts have recommended the use of the bar-code system to help prevent errors in administering medicine to patients.

Patchwork quilt

?My wife and I have started a foundation called the Quaid Foundation,? Dennis replied in answer to a question about the incident in November. ?We?re going to be dedicated to raising the standards in patient medical care. We will try to change things in a patchwork quilt way?one thing at a time. The first thing we?re trying is a bedside bar coding in hospitals that will serve as a guide in administering medicine, whether for child or adult patients because we?re all vulnerable. The coding system will be like what you have at supermarket checkout stands?a nurse can scan the medicine, her ID tag and the patient bracelet. If there?s a mistake, a warning will go off.

Dennis added, ?There?s a resistance to implementing this coding in the same way that there was a resistance to seatbelts being installed in cars back in the 1970s. With my wife and I trying to raise awareness of this issue, it may speed up the implementation of the bedside bar code system in hospitals. It?s really about human error. Human error is the cause of many deaths every year in the hospitals. We?re trying to minimize the impact of human error. That?s what we are dedicating ourselves to.

Completely normal

?They?re fine,? said the star of the comedy-drama, ?Smart People,? of the twin babies. ?They?re completely normal. They?re tough little critters. The real scary part was the 41 hours when they were given an overdose of Heparin. Their blood had thinned to the consistency of water. There was a danger of hemorrhaging. The same incident killed three kids in Indianapolis a year before that.?

Beaming, Dennis announced, ?They turned 5 months old today but it wasn?t until like a month ago that they acknowledged each other. We had them in the same crib. When they got too big for that, we put them in separate cribs. They didn?t even acknowledge each other. One day, I had them both like this (he showed how he carried them in each arm) and the boy looked up at his twin sister and did a double take (he demonstrated a startled look). Like, ?Who?s this? Who are you?? It was so funny to watch because it was like a light went on in the boy, like he just realized, there was somebody else. But the girl was [already] aware of him. She?s already trying to talk and communicate.?

Dennis shared that Jack, his teenage son with his ex-wife, Meg Ryan, was ?having a great time with the twins. He?s a good babysitter. He feeds them.?

Asked if he was apprehensive that Jack, who is a budding actor, might also experience the ?hard shocks and blows? that he underwent, the proud father answered, ?It?s hard shocks and blows, no matter what you choose to do in life, really. My philosophy with Jack is that I want him to follow his heart. I want him to do something that he?d love to do and figure out a way to get paid for it in the way that I have been lucky enough to do. He has always loved acting and he has been making movies since he was 8. He wasn?t even pushed [in that direction]. It?s in his blood, from his mother and myself. My cousin was Gene Autry and my great grandfather was in vaudeville.?

Like father

Dennis continued about Jack, who is turning 16 this month, ?The only rules that his mother and I set was that he should wait until he?s 18 to be in acting professionally, instead of being thrown into the pressures of a career. He?s doing it the right way. He?s in the drama department at school. He?s in all the plays and he?s really interested in learning the craft? which I?m really happy about.?

He revealed, ?I wanted to be a veterinarian myself. I didn?t really get the bug until I was in the first week of college. But Jack seems to really know what he wants to do. In fact, we have just come back from the East where we visited colleges, checking out their drama and film departments.?

In ?Smart People,? Dennis stars as a self-absorbed college professor with an over-achieving daughter (Ellen Page) and a slacker brother (Thomas Haden Church). He falls for a former student (Sarah Jessica Parker).

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, ?The Nepales Report,? on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.