The Prevention Of Neonatal Health Care Providers

Alarm fatigue is a growing national problem within the health care industry that links medical technology as a serious hazard that poses a significant threat to patient safety within hospitals across the country. Alarm fatigue occurs when nurses encounter an overwhelming amount of alarms thus becoming desensitized to the firing alarms. Alarm desensitization is a multifaceted issue that is related to the number of alarming medical devices, a high false alarm rate, and the lack of alarm standardization in hospitals today (Cvach, 2012). Desensitization can lead to delayed response times, alarms silenced or turned off, or alarms adjusted to unsafe limits, which can create a dangerous situation for the patient. Alarm fatigue

In Cvach’s (2012) article, an integrated review synthesized research and non-research findings of seventy-two articles, published between 1/1/2000 and 10/1/2011. The author used the John Hopkins Nursing Evidence Based-Practice model to measure and evaluate the articles for this review. The data collected were categorized into 5 main themes: excessive alarms and the effects on nurses, nurse's response to alarms, alarm sounds and audibility, technology to reduce false alarms, and alarm notification system (Cvach, 2012). The purpose of this integrated review was to find out if the volume of noise (false alarms vs true alarms) disrupts the nurse’s response and perception to physiologic clinical alarms. The 3 main recommendations provided by the researcher were to implement the use of smart technology, generate change within the hospital's environment and protocols, and use of precautionary measures by healthcare staff in order to reduce monitor alarm fatigue.

Alarm fatigue in health care has grown to be an ever-growing concern in the health care arena, especially when looking at patient safety concerns. There must be an understanding of the problem before we can develop policies and effective strategies to counter this problem. The concept of alarm fatigue in health care will be evaluated utilizing the method developed by Walker and Avant (2010) that identifies and gives the significance of the attributes, antecedents, and end-consequences of alarm fatigue in health care. This will be developed based

Goal 6: Know Your Alarms. Alarms familiarity on your unit is integral to the best patient safety. Take faulty

Back in 2003, the Joint Commission created a National Patient Safety Goal due to 23 occurrences of death or injury to a patient where alarms had been applied incorrectly or the alarms had been muted (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). By 2004, Joint Commission had removed it from their National Patient Safety Goal list and made it a requirement for Joint Commission accreditations (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). In 2013, it was brought to the attention of the Joint Commission regarding many alarm-related events, including multiple deaths, permanent loss of function, and prolonged hospital stays due to health care worker’s decreased response times to alarms (Horkan, 2014; Joint Commission, 2013). The Joint Commission reinstated a National Patient Safety Goal in 2013 and had requirements for all hospitals that had to be met by July 1, 2014 (Joint Commission, 2013). These goals included being able to make alarm safety a priority and develop a plan to decrease the amount of alarms. This plan could include preventing unnecessary patient monitoring, clarifying who is allowed to monitor and silence alarms, setting the cardiac monitors to have multiple tones, and having a brief delay in the alarm to see if the patient can self-resolve. The second phase of the Joint Commission’s plan was to be implemented by January 2016, to where the hospital must have followed through with their designated plan (Joint Commission, 2013).

Clinical alarm systems in acute and critical care health care settings are an assistive way to maintain communication between the client and the nurse. Awareness and comprehension of health devices is crucial to provide nurses with appropriate strategies for critical or non critical interventions that can lead to sentinel events. The ECRI, a nonprofit institute, has identified alarm hazards as the “Top Ten Health Technology Hazards” for 2014. (cite) In 2013 The Joint Commission published a Sentinel Event Alert proposing a National Safety Goal to focus on alarm safety (cite). This topic is pertinent information to be recognized and set as an achievable action in improving patient safety.

Prenatal care in the United States was not the way is today, there have been some improvements in regards to prenatal care. The number of pregnant women who received prenatal care has increased over the past 75 years (Zolotor and Carlough, 2014). Today, medical providers deliver more integrated services, which includes evidence-based screening, counseling, medical care, and psychosocial support.

Horkan, A. M. (2014). Exploring the Evidence Alarm Fatigue and Patient Safety. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 41(1), 83-85.

This paper examines this culture of alarm fatigue among nurses in clinical care areas and the resulting potential for harm among the patient population. Although alarm fatigue may happen in any clinical area with frequent or repetitive alarms, this paper focuses on the phenomenon in critical care. The broad scope of this issue coupled with the high risk of patient harm demands insight and action from the nursing profession. By discussion and review of contributing factors such as repetitive alarms, noise level, lack of individualized settings, poorly configured devices, and desensitization of nurses, healthcare providers can strategize methods to prevent patient harm resulting from alarm fatigue. These measures also promote efficiency

Neonatal Nurse Practitioners (NNP) refers to and cares for newborns in their first 28 days of life. Neonatal nurse practitioners practice advanced skills in order to provide care for healthy newborns, as well as newborns who need individualized attention. These nurses care for premature and sick newborns in many different settings: neonatal intensive care units (NICU), emergency rooms, delivery rooms, or specialty clinics(Nurse). NNP’s level of care enables them to preform multiple duties consisting of: monitoring specialized equipment, providing education to the families of the sick newborns, administering medications, preforming diagnostic tests and other procedures in order to establish a treatment plan for the newborns,

The education department at our organization assigns courses and providing resources to staff members to ensure we can identify vulnerable populations and how to ensure safety is maintained in every healthcare setting of our organization. In home health, we work as patient advocates ensuring patient safety is maintained. If we discover unsafe living conditions such as possible abuse or inadequate resources available while in the home, the nurse and health professionals are aware that we must report these situations to case managers, social worker, and our nurse managers. Weekly meetings are held in our facility, and we discuss concerns and patients situations with case managers, social worker, and nurse managers to ensure everything is being done to ensure a culture of safety is maintained for staff members and for the patients we provide care to. Our organization was evaluated by Joint Commission last month; this is also an excellent way to ensure a culture of safety is maintained in our healthcare organization. Receiving feedback from the surveyors and incorporating their suggestions for change into our organization is an excellent way to ensure a culture of safety as well. Ever since the results were received from our evaluation from Joint Commission, the education department and nurse managers have conducted two meetings and provided education on where improvements can be

Noises are one of the most prominent concerns that patients had. In order to solve this problem, Tinsley should make a regulation for employees to talk at a lower voice. In addition, in order to reduce the noise coming from moving wheels of stretchers, wheelchairs, and carts through the hallways; lubricants must be applied to the wheels regularly to keep them smooth and soundless. Since the buzzer system rings loudly in the hallway as well, a system can be implemented in order for them to ring only at the nurses’ desks so that other patients would not be bothered by the noise.

In today’s health care system, “quality” and “safety” are one in the same when it comes to patient care. As Florence Nightingale described our profession long ago, it takes work and vigilance to ensure we are doing the best we can to care for our patients. (Mitchell, 2008)

Infants within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are one of the most vulnerable patient population in the hospital. The quality and safety of these patients are at top priority because of their immune systems have not fully developed yet causing them to be at the highest risk for infections. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2001), quality is defined as “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” (Masters, 2005). The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) defines safety as, “the minimization of risk of harm to patients and

People always think that once you have a kid, it will be all sunshine and daisies. Maybe sometimes it can be like that, but not always. There are joys and challenges with everything in life. Many people have different ways of describing the joys or challenges of taking care of an infant, for example, some people would find that first outing as a joy and some people find it as a challenge. Men and Women both have perspectives with how they raise their children, whether together or as a single parent.