Alarms, be it smoke alarms, proximity alarms, or those used in hospitals and ER departments, are essential, as they can indubitably save lives. However, in a clinical setting like a hospital, the sheer volume of alarms can cause fatigue among the medical staff. Moreover, there is also the problem of nuisance alarms, which will be explored below.
What is nuisance detection?
A nuisance detection is a situation where the alarm registers a positive detection, but the underlying reason is not a cause of concern. Thus, it can be defined as a false alarm of sorts, causing unnecessary trouble for medical personnel, as they have to reset the alarm switch, which is used to denote the status of an alarm system.
What causes a nuisance alarm?
Nuisance detections and alarms can be caused by a variety of reasons, such as dust accumulation over the alarm sensor, insects obscuring the sensor, loose electrical connections, power interruption, humidity, and more.
Since all these reasons are benign and unrelated to a medical emergency, they can be classified as nuisance alarms. Now that the terminology and underlying causes are clear, it’s time to explore 8 ways in which these false detections can be reduced in a hospital setting.
8 Features to Help Reduce Nuisance Alarms
These 8 features can be further subclassified into three groups, alarm specifications, door alarms, and the nurse’s station.
Alarm Specifications:
1) Alarm Time Delay
Although precious seconds might be valuable in a hospital, a buffer of a few seconds might actually be more effective in saving lives, it can remove all nuisance alarms from the equation.
With the aid of alarm time delay, one can create a buffer of a few seconds in which the false alarm can be hopefully detected and eliminated.
2) Alarm Flutter Buffer
An alarm flutter buffer essentially stops the alarms in and out of the threshold from constantly going on and off. The alarm threshold is defined as the time in which the motion is first detected and the alarm actually sounds off. Hence, this buffer time can also be adjusted.
3) Alarm Silence Period
Sometimes, when the alarms are sounding constantly, it can cause desensitization among the working staff, making them ignore other important alarms that might have a similar pitch and frequency.
To eliminate this drawback, an alarm silence period can also be introduced, wherein the medical personnel can disable a particular alarm for a certain period of time till it is activated once again. This will provide them with the necessary breather to focus on other alarms and distress calls.
Door Alarms:
4) Door Alarm Delay
Door alarms are installed on important doorways and passageways so that one room can remain isolated from the rest.
While this is quite important in a hospital, unnecessary door alarms can create quite a nuisance for the already bustling staff.
Hence, the door alarm delay feature can be employed, wherein the staff will be notified about an open door only after a stipulated period of time.
5) Door Alarm Disable
Door alarm systems can be installed collectively for a multitude of doors. However, not all doors require these sensors, as leaving them open might not be consequential.
Thus, hospital staff can identify such doors and disable the alarms for them, so that the number of alarms is significantly reduced. Therefore, the number of blaring alarms would reduce, making it easier for medical staff to focus on more important alerts.
The Nurse’s Station:
6) Remote Alarm Silence
In hospitals with critical care, it is common practice to install alarms in rooms of the patients so they can call the nurse for help or during distress. While it is necessary, it can become tedious for the nurses to walk into the room, disable the alarm, and then address the patient.
Conversely, they can opt for the remote alarm silence feature, where once the alarm is heard and the correct room has been identified.
The nurses can disable the alarm remotely right from their station before attending the call, saving them precious time and energy.
7) Visual/Audio Split
Although alarms act as an important form of communication between the nurses and the patients, chances are that the system can be optimized to reduce disturbances for the recovering patients.
This can be achieved with the help of a visual/audio split. In this feature, the visual alarm is installed in the patient’s room and the audio alarm is installed at the nurse’s station.
In this manner, the patient can beckon the nurse for aid, but the sound of the alarm will not jar or disturb them. On the other hand, the nurses will receive the audio alarm so that they are duly notified of the patient’s needs.
8) Multi-Room Monitoring
One of the best courses of action is to monitor patients’ rooms and hallways for conditions that might trigger an alarm. In this manner, the staff can be aware of any situation even before the alarm is sounded, allowing them to see if it is a genuine cause of distress or a nuisance alarm.
If it is the former, then they can immediately spring into action. Thus, multi-room monitoring is the most comprehensive yet effective way to eliminate false alarms.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by adding these 8 features, any hospital or medical facility can severely reduce cases of nuisance alarms, making their responses faster and more efficient. While the list isn’t exhaustive by any means, the implementation of these ideas is definitely a solid first step to boosting the medical alarm system of any facility.
