by
Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | November 10, 2011
1. Alarm management
Number two on last year's list was alarm fatigue -- when nurses are so overwhelmed by the cacophony of bleeps and bloops issuing from a patient's bedside that they tune them out, or even, sometimes, turn down the volume of the alarms. This year, for the number one hazard, ECRI expanded the category to include all the dangers of alarm management, including the problem of staff not being able to grasp quickly the urgency of an alarm or even tell what device it's coming from. "Alarm management is complex," reads a training poster on alarm safety developed by ECRI that is, appropriately, quite complex. The problem is so unruly that last month, ECRI, AAMI, FDA, the American College of Clinical Engineering and the Joint Commission convened a summit on how to handle it.
"I think that an important message from the summit is that there are steps that hospitals can take now to improve alarm safety," ECRI's Keller said.
Among ECRI's recommendations are to ensure proper staffing levels, establish protocols for addressing alarms, and work out that the right caregiver is notified that a specific alarm has sounded. Still, the institute warns that properly tackling a problem as knotty as this one requires looking at the health care organization as a whole. "Trying to fix one item in isolation may provide only a partial solution and may also introduce new opportunities for failure," ECRI said. "While some of our recommendations are specific to individual care areas, and are important to consider, don't let them keep you from looking at the bigger picture."
What's your risk level?
For those interested, ECRI has also launched this month a Web-based survey tool hospitals can use to see how "at-risk" they are for a given hazard.
"Hospitals can assign an appropriate staff member to complete the survey for each of the hazards," Keller said. "Our tool provides a risk level score based on the hospital’s answers. Hospitals can use this information to help prioritize their health technology-related safety efforts. Members of ECRI Institute’s Health Devices, Health Devices Gold, and SELECTPlus programs can access the tool from ECRI Institute’s website."
To see the full report, ECRI's Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2012, visit www.ecri.org/2012_top_10_hazards.Back to HCB News
