Nurses' Perspectives and Experiences of Using a Bed-Exit Information System in an Acute Hospital Setting: Mixed...

Area of Science:

• Nursing Informatics
• Patient Safety Technology
• Healthcare Innovation

Background:

• Bed-exit information systems (BES) can assist nurses in acute care by detecting patients at risk of falling when leaving their beds.
• Understanding nurses' experiences with BES is crucial for effective implementation in hospital settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore nurses' perspectives and experiences with a bed-exit information system (BES) in an acute care hospital.
• To evaluate the impact of BES on nurses' workload, strain, and patient safety.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of BES across three hospital wards.
• Nurses completed online surveys and participated in focus groups before and after BES implementation.
• Analysis of patient adverse event rates and descriptive statistics for survey data; content analysis for focus groups.

Main Results:

• While 64% of nurses reported reduced workload for patients with cognitive impairment, overall workload and strain were not significantly reduced.
• The adverse event rate per patient per day decreased significantly (factor of 0.61, P=.03).
• Challenges included information overload, alarm fatigue, and difficulties operationalizing BES due to care setting heterogeneity.

Conclusions:

• BES offers limited support for specific scenarios involving patients with cognitive impairment.
• Managing expectations of BES performance is vital for aligning perceived and actual benefits.
• Future improvements should focus on objective patient care measures, subjective nurse experiences, and technical specifications, including enhanced information mechanisms to reduce alarm fatigue.