Impact of a Data-driven Monitor Alarm Reduction Strategy Implemented in Safety Huddles

Hospital physiologic monitors can alert clinicians to early signs of physiologic deterioration, and thus have great potential to be life-saving. However, monitors generate frequent alarms, most of which are non-actionable. When clinicians become overburdened with alarms, they begin to exhibit alarm fatigue: responding more slowly to alarms or ignoring alarms entirely. In this protocol the investigators outline the methods they will use to evaluate the impact of a safety huddle-based intervention on physiologic monitor alarm rates using a pragmatic, paired, cluster-randomized controlled trial with the intervention delivered at the unit level. This work is considered quality improvement research, and some of the approaches described in this protocol are from the field of quality improvement. Currently, at most hospitals data like this on the numbers of alarms that patients generate are only available to researchers with the software tools needed to interrogate and record data from the monitor network. The goal of this proposal is to bring this data to the safety huddles occurring daily on inpatient units in an accessible format to help teams make informed decisions about monitoring and minimize the potential of harm from alarm fatigue.

Inclusion criteria: Any nurse, physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant caring for a patient whose alarms are discussed in a safety huddle on an intervention unit. Exclusion criteria: none