• Critical care nurse · Apr 2023

    Implementing a Unit-Based Alarm Management Bundle for Critical Care Nurses.

    • Stephanie Bosma and Roberta Christopher.
    • Stephanie Bosma is a critical care nurse, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida.
    • Crit Care Nurse. 2023 Apr 1; 43 (2): 364536-45.

    BackgroundClinical alarms are designed to signal an unsatisfactory patient physiological state and alert staff members to malfunctioning medical equipment. Alarm desensitization and fatigue can occur when clinicians are exposed to an overwhelming number of clinical alarms, particularly nonactionable alarms.Local ProblemAlarm fatigue and alarm management competency related to use of Philips monitoring systems were noted to be problematic among nurses working in the 27-bed surgical intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in northeastern Florida.MethodsA quality improvement project was conducted to reduce alarm fatigue and improve nursing competency in managing alarms. The CEASE (Communication, Electrodes, Appropriateness, Setup, and Education) evidence-based alarm management bundle was implemented on the unit, and a representative from the alarm manufacturer conducted in-service training sessions. A clinical alarms survey developed by the Healthcare Technology Foundation was distributed both before and after the intervention to 115 nurses working in the unit. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to assess for differences between the preintervention and postintervention periods.ResultsNurse participants demonstrated improved alarm management competency, resulting in significant improvements in their perceptions of alarm functionality, settings, response time, and policy adherence. There was a statistically significant decrease in self-reported alarm fatigue, and the CEASE bundle was found to influence nursing practice.ConclusionsThe Joint Commission's 2022 goal of improving clinical alarm safety remains a top priority nationwide. Implementation of the CEASE alarm management bundle was effective in reducing surgical intensive care unit nurses' alarm fatigue and improving their alarm management practices.©2023 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…