In June 2013, the Joint Commission set alarm safety as a national patient safety goal and gave hospitals a January 2016 deadline to create safety policies and staff education programs on when alarms can and cannot be disabled. That deadline has arrived and, according to The Wall Street Journal, hospitals are "scrambling" to meet and maintain compliance with some of the requirements.
Rikin Shah, a senior consultant at the nonprofit patient safety research group ECRI Institute, told WSJ "culture is probably the hardest part of alarm management because staffers are used to doing things their own way."
To help hospitals meet the Joint Commission's requirement, Mr. Shah suggested hospitals do frequent audits and random spot checks of their alarm systems.
According to the report, studies have been conducted by the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's children's hospital to find the root causes of alarm-related adverse events and identify the best initiatives to improve alarm management.
One practice UCSF adopted from its study was adding a 20-second delay to oxygen saturation monitors, so the alarm only sounds if the change in oxygen saturation persists for 20 seconds. The change reduced the number of alarms with no adverse outcomes.
Dr. Wyatt suggests educating patients and families about monitors and alarms in use to engage them in improvement efforts.
For more study findings and best practices, read the full report here.
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