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Reducing the Risk of Alarm Fatigue Through the Use of Focused Management in Safety Huddles

NCT02319421 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 812

Last updated 2017-04-19

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Context: Alarm fatigue is a threat to hospital patient safety. National surveys reveal that high alarm rates interrupt patient care, reduce trust in alarms, and lead clinicians to disable alarms entirely. Safety huddles offer an appropriate forum for reviewing alarm data and identifying patients whose high alarm rates may necessitate safe tailoring of alarm limits.

Objectives: To evaluate the impact of a focused physiologic monitor alarm reduction intervention integrated into safety huddles that involves discussing safe monitor parameter adjustments on the physiologic monitor alarm rates of individual patients with high alarm rates who meet "low acuity" criteria.

Study Design: A prospective, quasi-experimental pilot study of the impact of the huddle intervention on the alarm rates of low acuity high alarm rate individual patients discussed in huddles in the PICU. The huddle intervention will consist of a script to facilitate the discussion of the alarm data.

Setting/Participants: Participants will include all low acuity patients and their providers in the PICU at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Study Interventions and Measures: The primary outcome is the rate of crisis and warning alarms per patient day for intervention cases as compared with others in the high alarm / low acuity cohort. Safety measures will include unexpected changes in patient acuity or code blue events within one week of monitor change or discharge.

Conditions

  • Clinical Alarms

Interventions

OTHER

Alarm Reduction Script

The intervention will consist of a script to facilitate the discussion of the alarm data that will take place on weekday mornings. The script will be used by huddle participants as a structured outline to rapidly discuss the high alarm low acuity patients eligible for intervention. The patients who are identified will have further discussion on rounds to determine if there are appropriate ways to reduce the alarm rates of individual patients through the safe adjustment of physiologic monitor parameters.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Christopher P Bonafide, MD · Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2015-03-31
Primary Completion
2016-03-31
Completion
2017-01-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02319421 on ClinicalTrials.gov