[Alarm fatigue during continuous monitoring at the general ward]

Continuous monitoring of vital signs with wearable wireless sensors is increasingly being applied on general nursing wards. Although alarms are considered important for early detection of clinical deterioration, 'alarm fatigue' can seriously hamper the implementation of continuous monitoring. Current systems regularly generate high false alarm frequency, which is generally unworkable. Moreover, the potential yield of alarms is very small, as acute life-threatening events on general wards are extremely rare. In this article we describe our perspectives based up on our experiences with continuous monitoring on a surgical ward without the use of alarms. Instead, the trend of heart rate and respiration was monitored every 6 hours, which allowed for adequate detection of gradual deterioration. A follow-up study on the effectiveness of these methods is currently being conducted at our center. Future research will focus on the development of predictive algorithms that aid in the interpretation of monitoring trend data.