Physiologic Monitor Alarm Rates at 5 Children's Hospitals

• Published in: Journal of hospital medicine Vol. 13; no. 6; pp. 396 - 398
• Main Authors: Schondelmeyer, Amanda C., Brady, Patrick W., Goel, Veena V., Cvach, Maria, Blake, Nancy, Mangeot, Colleen, Bonafide, Christopher P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Frontline Medical Communications 01.06.2018
• Subjects: Child; Clinical Alarms - adverse effects; Clinical Alarms - statistics & numerical data; Cross-Sectional Studies; Hospitals, Pediatric; Humans; Intensive care; Intensive Care Units, Pediatric - statistics & numerical data; Monitoring, Physiologic - statistics & numerical data
• ISSN: 1553-5592; 1553-5606
• DOI: 10.12788/jhm.2918

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.