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Related Experiment Videos

Physiologic Monitor Alarm Rates at 5 Children's Hospitals.

Amanda C Schondelmeyer1,2, Patrick W Brady3,2, Veena V Goel4,5

  • 1Division of Hospital Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. amanda.schondelmeyer@cchmc.org.

Journal of Hospital Medicine
|April 26, 2018
PubMed
Summary

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This summary is machine-generated.

Hospital monitor alarm fatigue is a serious issue. A study found significant variations in alarm rates across children's hospitals, with a small percentage of patients generating most alarms.

Area of Science:

  • Clinical Informatics
  • Patient Safety
  • Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

  • Alarm fatigue, caused by excessive and often non-actionable monitor alarms, is a critical patient safety concern.
  • It can lead to delayed or missed responses to critical events, increasing patient morbidity and mortality.
  • Understanding current alarm burden is essential for developing effective mitigation strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To quantify alarm rates and types across different units in freestanding children's hospitals.
  • To identify patient populations contributing disproportionately to the overall alarm burden.
  • To provide data for targeted interventions to reduce alarm fatigue.

Main Methods:

  • A point-prevalence, cross-sectional study design was employed.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Audible alarms were collected from all inpatient units at 5 freestanding children's hospitals over a single day.
  • Alarm rates were calculated per monitored patient per day, categorized by alarm type.

    • Main Results:

    • A total of 147,213 alarms were recorded during the study period.
    • Significant variation (3-fold) in alarm rates was observed across hospitals for similar unit types.
    • A small proportion of monitored beds (approximately 25%) accounted for a large majority of alarms (71% in medical-surgical, 61% in NICU, 63% in PICU).

    Conclusions:

    • High alarm burden and significant inter-hospital variability exist in children's hospitals.
    • A concentrated group of patients generates a disproportionate number of alarms, suggesting a target for intervention.
    • Focusing on reducing non-actionable alarms in high-alarm-count patients may effectively decrease overall alarm rates and mitigate alarm fatigue.