Using Team Resource Management to Improve the Nurse Response Rate of Physiological Monitor Alarm

Sunday, 22 July 2018

Hui-Mei Huang, BSN
Department of nursing, Mennonite Christian Hospital, Hualien,Taiwan, Taiwan

Purpose:

This project purpose is improving the nurse response rate of physiological monitor alarm for maintain medical care quality and patient safety.

Joint Commission International (JCI) and Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) reported that medical technology hazard is listed as one of the objectives of the effectiveness of the clinical alert system to improve patient safety. In Taiwan, we also incorporate device and alarm system into hospital medical quality and patient safety 2016-2017 annual goals. Physiological monitors are the most commonly used devices in ICU. In the clinical auditing found that nurses on the physiological monitor response rate only 19.23%.Thereby, we uses TRM and clinical auditing to improve the response of physiological monitor alarm for provide better quality healthcare.

Methods:

Clinical auditing with check list was used to monitor the nurses to clinical alarm response. The check list was including clinical physiological monitor alarm source, alarm signal color, response time and check or not in this project.

The intervention of TRM, formulate the alarm setting of SOP, and education for nurse about the alarm cognitive and technology were arranged.

Results:

The actual observation and clinical auditing in 24hours showed that total of 1555 times physiological monitor alarm was found. There was 1256 (80.77%) alarm signal no response. Up to 647 (41.61%) was no response of heartbeat item. Among them, alarm signal of yellow color 1090 (70.10%)for the most and response time between 10 to 30second were 947(60.09%).After TRM, SOP policy promote and education to nurses, the nurses response rate of physiological monitor alarm from 19.23% up to 91.74%.

Conclusion:

By using the TRM and clinical auditing on the implementation of the clinical physiological monitor alarm, can be improved the response rate. At the same time, their work efficiency should be enhanced among the Interprofessional practice. Also, the quality of medical care and patient safety can be improved. In the future, we will continue to conduct regular reviews on the efficiency of implementation and extend our efforts and experience to the Interprofessional practice to provide the best quality healthcare.