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Physiologic Monitor Alarm Rates at 5 Children's Hospitals
Author(s) -
Schondelmeyer Amanda C.,
Brady Patrick W.,
Goel Veena V.,
Cvach Maria,
Blake Nancy,
Mangeot Colleen,
Bonafide Christopher P.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of hospital medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.128
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1553-5606
pISSN - 1553-5592
DOI - 10.12788/jhm.2918
Subject(s) - alarm , medicine , emergency medicine , intensive care unit , medical emergency , intensive care , intensive care medicine , composite material , materials science
Alarm fatigue has been linked to patient morbidity and mortality in hospitals due to delayed or absent responses to monitor alarms. We sought to describe alarm rates at 5 freestanding children's hospitals during a single day and the types of alarms and proportions of patients monitored by using a point‐prevalence, cross‐sectional study design. We collected audible alarms on all inpatient units and calculated overall alarm rates and rates by alarm type per monitored patient per day. We found a total of 147,213 alarms during the study period, with 3‐fold variation in alarm rates across hospitals among similar unit types. Across hospitals, one‐quarter of monitored beds were responsible for 71%, 61%, and 63% of alarms in medical‐surgical, neonatal intensive care, and pediatric intensive care units, respectively. Future work focused on addressing nonactionable alarms in patients with the highest alarm counts may decrease alarm rates.