Promoting patient safety and improving the quality of patient care
Category: Alarm Fatigue
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, “At the Hospital, Better Responses to Those Beeping Alarms”, actions that hospitals are taking to help solve alarm fatigue are noted.
Hats off to @JackiOBrien1, @Nada44880470, @pfcryer, @BEastman_Sazan, @aimee_jungman, and many others for their tweets about alarm fatigue.
Here are key examples:
The Joint Commission (TJC) has made better alarm management a national patient safety goal. In Sentinel Event Alert #50 “Medical device alarm safety in hospitals”, TJC has stated:
Continue reading “7 Expected Practice and Nursing Actions to Reduce Alarm Fatigue”
Will your hospital be compliant with The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal? In issuing this Goal, The Joint Commission stated:
In Phase II (beginning January 2016), hospitals will be expected to develop and implement specific components of policies and procedures. Education of those in the organization about alarm system management will also be required in January 2016.
Continue reading “Is Your Hospital Compliant with Joint Commission Requirements?”
The top 5 health and safety posts for 2015 on the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) blog demonstrate risk management concerns for monitoring patients to prevent respiratory depression, preventing blood clots, and the need to manage device alarms.
By Sean Power
November 11, 2015
How many telemetry alarms are generated in a single month by two hospitals, 716 beds, 36,386 admissions, 93,634 visits to the emergency department, 3,418 births, 453 open-heart surgeries, and 11,688 surgical procedures?
Over a quarter million, according to Kevin Smith, BSN, RN, CNML, CVRN-BC, Director II Cardiac Telemetry Services at NCH Healthcare System in Naples, Florida, in a presentation shared at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation Foundation’s (AAMI) Patient Safety Seminar.
Continue reading “How One Healthcare System Used Two Interventions to Tackle Alarm Fatigue”
We have plenty of patient safety articles to share with you this week. From advice for nurses on how to educate patients about opioid diversion to tips for preventing medical errors in long-term care, audiences across the health care spectrum will benefit from some weekend reading.
Continue reading “Weekly Must-Reads in Patient Safety and Health Care (November 6, 2015) – When False Alarms Pollute Intensive Care”
This is the fourth article in a series exploring the impact of pulse oximetry alarm thresholds in hospitalized patients.
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
In the first article, “Improving the Safety of Post-Surgical Care,” I introduced the concept that, although the current approach to physiologic threshold monitoring (triggering an alarm when oxygen saturation falls below 90%) works well in the OR, it is unreliable on post-surgical floors. Continue reading “The Risk of Opioids in Post-Surgical Settings”
Adjusting pulse oximetry alarm thresholds to avoid false alarms and universally monitoring all triggered alarms improves patient safety—so why don’t we do it?
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
This is the second article in a series exploring the impact of pulse oximetry alarm thresholds in hospitalized patients. In the first article, “Improving the Safety of Post-Surgical Care,” I introduced the concept that, although the current approach to physiologic threshold monitoring (triggering an alarm when oxygen saturation falls below 90%) works great in the OR, it is unreliable on post-surgical floors. Continue reading “Pulse Oximetry False Alarms on Post-Surgical Floors”
While the Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit called for “orders of magnitude” change, the story of Amber Scott, a mother who slipped into a coma during delivery, illuminates why improving safety for even a single person matters. Continue reading “Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety (Feb 6, 2015)”
Alarms! Alarms! Alarms! … and a family seeks answers to death at a VA hospital.
But, before we get to the serious news … a little humor … Continue reading “Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety (Jan 23, 2015)”