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Our sat limits are set 88-93% for our low birth weight preemies to save their eyes from harm. Those alarms make us crazy... Wean oxygen 1% sat too low, increase by 1%, sat too high. All day we hear this... And we do get start to get immune to the sound after 8 hours. Six monitors constantly alarming is enough to make you scream.
This isn't peds-specific, but allowing the nurses to customize the monitor alarms limits alarm fatigue, period. I had a lot less problems with alarms when I worked somewhere that alarms were nursing-regulated. Now that we have to have a physician's order in the chart to adjust alarm parameters, it's different. So, for the love of all that's holy, don't implement only changing parameters based on physician orders. It's a nightmare.
meanmaryjean, DNP, RN
7,899 Posts
I'm working on an Alarm Fatigue group at my large hospital. I am the only rep from the peds side of things- and so much of the adult evidence is not applicable, given our unique patient diversity.
I've tried a lit search, but am coming up empty for the most part. Any of you working on this from a peds point of view? What have you found? Can you point me to ANY specific resources I can use for this?