I know you can relate to this situation. You’re walking through a parking lot when suddenly a car alarm starts going off and doesn’t stop, and (I’m willing to bet), you keep on walking without looking back. Sound familiar?
When car alarms first emerged back in the 80s they were few and far between. The ear splitting sounds of the alarms turned heads of onlookers, to what could be a serious situation in need of attention. It didn’t take too long, however, for us all to become desensitized to the familiar warbles and chirps, and we no longer paid any attention to them — defeating their purpose.
The same desensitization, or fatigue, happens with clinical alarms in hospitals. But, there are ways to help reduce alarm fatigue according to a study published in Pediatrics.
In the study researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, led by Christopher Dandoy, M.D., of the hospital’s Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute, found that a standardized, team-based approach could dramatically reduce alarm fatigue — helping to eliminate the possibility of not responding to a true event.
The researchers created a standardized cardiac monitor care procedure for the hospital’s 24-bed pediatric bone marrow transplant unit.
As part of the project, Dandoy and his team developed a process for ordering monitor parameters according to age-appropriate standards, pain-free daily electrode replacement, personalized daily cardiac monitor parameter assessment and a reliable way of appropriately discontinuing monitors. Under these protocols, the median number of daily cardiac alarms fell from 180 to 40, while caregiver compliance increased from 38 percent to 95 percent.
“Cardiac monitors constitute the majority of alarms throughout the hospital,” Dandoy said in a hospital announcement. “We think our approach to reducing monitor alarms can serve as a model for other hospitals throughout the country.”
Fewer false alarms, he added, will allow hospital staff to devote more attention to significant alarms. Although the process was enacted in a pediatric unit, Dandoy and his team said it was applicable to “most units with cardiac monitor care.”
“Hospitals are greatly concerned about alarm fatigue because it interferes with patient safety, and it exposes patients–and the hospitals themselves–to grave harm,” said Michael Wong, executive director of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety, who presented findings at the Society for Technology in Anesthesia, earlier this year that hospital staff are exposed to an average of 350 alarms per bed, per day based on a sample from an intensive care unit at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center says nationwide adoption could increase patient safety
You can read the full study here.
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico say that tracking Wikipedia page views can forecast the spread of influenza and dengue fever.
The researchers claim their algorithm allows them to overcome the challenges that hamper the reliability of other similar data surveillance methods based on Internet information.
Google Flu Trends, is a web service operated by Google, which provides estimates of influenza activity by aggregating Google search queries. But, early last year it was reported that they drastically overestimated peak flu levels, casting some doubt on the search giant’s ability to predict flu trends.
“Using simple statistical techniques, our proof-of-concept experiments suggest that these data are effective for predicting the present, as well as forecasting up to the 28-day limit of our tests,” the Los Alamos researchers say. “Our results also suggest that these models can be used even in places with no official data upon which to build models.
Though there are still detractors to the notion of using such systems to predict disease outbreaks, it is no doubt amazing to witness the many uses to which the growing volumes of meta data available on the internet will be used.
Read the full report here.
An article published in FierceHelathcare’s eBook “Systemwide Transformations that Improve Healthcare Quality and Efficiency.” argues the best way to treat patients is with evidence-based protocols (EBPs).
Here is an excerpt:
In a new and evolving healthcare market that rewards efficiency and quality care, hospitals must find a way to streamline their systems to put forth better results for patients and more savings for their organizations.
One way to accomplish this is by focusing on evidence-based care protocols–the clinical care recommendations supported by the best available evidence in the clinical literature.
Although there may be 200 ways to do something, in some cases clinicians have strong evidence that reveals the best way to do it, says David J. Ballard, M.D., Ph.D., chief quality officer for Baylor Scott & White Health, a not-for-profit healthcare system based in Dallas that includes 46 hospitals and more than 500 patient care sites. For instance, Baylor implemented a standardized heart failure order set, which has the potential, if it were deployed across the country, to save $2 billion in annual hospital costs and prevent 1,500 in-hospital deaths annually.
The results of EBPs are better care for patients, and cost savings for healthcare organizations.
You can read more about Evidence-Based Practices here.
But, for many, the pain is not. No one enjoys the thought of getting a shot, and Risk and Quality Managers also wince at the need to track their organization’s vaccination screening compliance – most systems are a hassle. There’s no need to worry anymore.
We’ve taken the pain out of compliance tracking with our easy-to-use Influenza Vaccination Screening Compliance Worksheet addition to ActionCue Clinical Intelligence.
Although the rates of infection have steadily decreased over the past few years, still approximately 75,000 deaths were attributed to hospital-acquired infections in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are measures that can be taken to lower infection rates which are surprisingly easy.
Red blood cell (RBC) transfusion strategies are a common treatment in the U.S. But, infection rates dropped by 20 percent when hospitals performed them less often.
It is the simplest one on the list, and a shock that it even needs to be on here. Yet, a large enough portion of healthcare workers resist the practice that it bears constant reminding.
This is a shameless plug because it works. Other industries have adopted information technologies to dramatically improve their quality, Healthcare is no different.
A study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine found that a dedicated and educated housekeeping team reduced room infection by 89% of baseline.
A study published in the May 2013 issue of Infection Control and Epidemiology found that copper surfaces reduced the amount of health care-acquired infections by more than half.
I didn’t until I wrote this article. Find out more information by visiting the globalhandwashing.org website.