Research on Patient Monitoring Alarms in ICU and NICU

Objective The patient monitors were used to explore the alarm actuality in a ICU and NICU to investigate the awareness and reaction of medical staff to alarms. Methods A series of surveys and interviews were taken to acquire clinicians' feelings and attitudes to monitoring alarms. The researchers were scheduled to track the alarms with annotations, and collect the alarm data of patient monitors using central monitoring system. Results A total of 235 387 and 67 783 alarms occurred in ICU and NICU respectively. The average alarm rate was about 142 alarms/patient-day in ICU and 96 alarms/patient-day in NICU. Conclusion There remains alarm fatigue in ICU and NICU, the main reason is the large number of false alarms and clinically irrelevant alarms. In addition, patient monitor is still in the level of threshold alarms or combined alarms, the data integrity and intelligence level need to be improved in future.