Back on Feb 15, Michele Noris, from NPR's All Things Considered spoke with, Boston Globe reporter, Liz Kowalczyk about her investigative series on how hospital staff can tune out or not react with urgency to patient alarms.
Kowalczyk states, "One of the cases that I wrote about involved an elderly woman at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was in the hospital to get a cardiac catheterization. Her monitor sounded an alarm for about an hour, indicating a weak battery. And then for about 15 minutes, indicating a battery that was about to die. And no one responded to that alarm and she did have a heart attack. And because the alarm - the monitor wasn't working, there was no alarm to alert staff to her heart attack."
Kowalczyk also talks about what hospitals are doing to help the situation. " Well, I think there are some short-term solutions. Hospitals are trying, you know, one is to hire nurses or technicians whose sole job is just to monitor the monitors. Another solution hospitals are looking at is trying to reduce the number of people on monitors. There are a lot of patients on cardiac monitors who probably don't need to be on cardiac monitors."
You can read the entire interview over at Nurses Can Become Desensitized To Hospital Sounds
Kowalczyk states, "One of the cases that I wrote about involved an elderly woman at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was in the hospital to get a cardiac catheterization. Her monitor sounded an alarm for about an hour, indicating a weak battery. And then for about 15 minutes, indicating a battery that was about to die. And no one responded to that alarm and she did have a heart attack. And because the alarm - the monitor wasn't working, there was no alarm to alert staff to her heart attack."
Kowalczyk also talks about what hospitals are doing to help the situation. " Well, I think there are some short-term solutions. Hospitals are trying, you know, one is to hire nurses or technicians whose sole job is just to monitor the monitors. Another solution hospitals are looking at is trying to reduce the number of people on monitors. There are a lot of patients on cardiac monitors who probably don't need to be on cardiac monitors."
You can read the entire interview over at Nurses Can Become Desensitized To Hospital Sounds
What are some of your suggestions to help stay in tune with the abundance of alarms?
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