Reference no: EM133569957

Question: Alarms are intended to alert caregivers of potential patient problems. But if alarms are not properly managed, they can compromise patient safety.

After completing the assigned readings:

Respond in one strategy per level.
Develop one alarm management and patient safety strategies for each of the following levels of care:
Organizational
Unit
Individual caregiver
Review the rubric for more information on how your assignment will be graded.
Submit as an attachment to the assignment area.

this is an example for the assignment:
Alarm fatigue can occur in a hospital setting due to a couple of reasons such as being understaffed, which can essentially result in desensitization to alarms or miss alarms. Alarm fatigue can be dangerous to patients' safety and there have been deaths attributed to alarm fatigue. However, "Research has demonstrated that 72% to 99% of clinical alarms are false" (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). This explains why nurses may ignore some alarms because they sense that the machine is beeping for a "false alarm". Medical technology is advancing every day, these alarms are created to raise more awareness for patient safety and positive outcomes. Through organizational, unit, and individual care, nurses can address patient safety through advanced medical technology. To improve alarm management at the organizational level the hospital needs to demand its healthcare workers to take training classes on alarm management to reduce the chances of alarm fatigue. Also, to teach nurses who they can reach out to if the monitor or channels are having a technical issue and sending out false alarms. It'll also be useful for healthcare workers to learn how to troubleshoot technologies that do not require too much of their time. This way they can enhance their care for their patient which will essentially lead to optimal results in patient care. As a unit, it is important for leaders to make sure that their staff are following manual policies regarding hospital equipment. There are ways to reduce alarm fatigue on the unit such as cleaning and replacing the cords of the monitor for every new admit. In the hospital, nurses often forget that they have many resources they can reach out to, as a unit it is important to know what everyone's purpose is, so when help is needed on a certain thing they may reach out to the right person. Therefore, if there are issues with the equipment, employees may establish a multidisciplinary team such as clinical engineering to address alarm safety and management.