Retire the Stale

Name and date the current version, then remove old copies so no one can mistake them for the live one.

Taped inside your parents' medicine cabinet are three medication lists in three handwritings. One reflects what Dad actually takes since the cardiologist's changes last month. The others are ghosts, and the aide who covers Tuesdays has been working from a ghost, which is how a discontinued blood-pressure pill nearly got administered twice.

Retire the Stale is the heuristic for obsolete instructions, plans, or records competing with the current version. The procedure: name the current version and date it visibly, remove old copies from every active location, and archive only what still matters, keeping one dated copy of the old list for the medical record rather than for the cabinet door. The spec pairs this with a safeguard that keeps the purge honest: preserve required audit, legal, and clinical history, because retiring is not shredding. The stop rule defines success precisely: stop when no ordinary user, meaning the Tuesday aide, a visiting sibling, or a paramedic, could mistake an old item for the live one. Note what this heuristic refuses to rely on: everyone remembering which list is right. Memory is what already failed. The visible change is a cabinet with exactly one list, dated last month, and no competition. Do not run this before the clinician has actually confirmed which version is current.