Abstract

The purpose of this project is to highlight the need for alarm management to combat alarm fatigue and improve patient safety. The target audience for this presentation includes, but is not limited to, the University of Texas at Tyler students and professors. Technology is always changing and healthcare must stay to stay up-to-date with the most recent technology for quality and safe patient care. Technology helps to improve efficiency, patient safety, reduce cost, and reduce errors. Although technology intends to improve patient outcomes, unintended situations also occur for patients and care providers as a result of technology (Karapas & Bobay, 2021). Cardiac telemetry monitoring is one technology that plays an important function during hospitalization for the monitoring of heart rates/rhythms, diagnosis of any abnormal heart rhythms, and ensuring medications are working. Clinical alarms are expected to alert caregivers and promote quick responses for patient assessment. However, with continuous telemetry monitoring, these alarms are sounding so frequently that they lead to alarm fatigue for the nurses.

Alarm fatigue is desensitization to auditory stimuli that occurs from sensory overload from frequent noise. It has been linked to adverse events and a considerable number of patient deaths (Karapas & Bobay, 2021). Per Karapas & Bobay (2021), approximately 68-99% of the alarms heard frequently do not require any clinical interventions. The large percentage of non-actionable alarms noticed confirms the need for an improvement in alarm safety. Developing a protocol for adjusting telemetry monitor settings will help reduce alarm fatigue and ultimately improve patient safety.

Date of publication

Fall 12-8-2021

Document Type

MSN Capstone Project

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/3831

Degree

Masters of Science in Nursing Administration

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Nursing Commons

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