Those Pesky IV Alarms

[Tait, MSN, RN]

I am a 12 hour night nurse in a large metropolitan hospital. We have round units that make it moderately hard to hear IV alarms when we are not on that side of the unit, but I do find we have them loud enough that I can generally always catch them before a patient hits the call light. At least I always try to.

I feel that IV alarms are very vital in assuring our patients fluids/medications keep on flowing.

I was just wondering if there are any nurses out there that have a different system for IV alarms opposed to the classic, "beep beep beep" in the middle of the night that often becomes a headache for the patient due to temperamental pumps.

My ideas to combat this are as follows:

IV pagers: Simple enough, nurse carries a pager for the rooms she has and when an IV is alarming it alerts a pager on her hip as opposed to sounding in the room.

Advantage: Quiet room/quiet floor. Increased speed in catching a malfunctioning pump. Increased comfort for the patient and their family. May keep family and patients from attempting to silence annoying pumps on their own (I have run into this, or patients with AC IV's asking how to do it themselves).

Disadvantage: Might be easily silenced and forgotten about, doesn't let other nurses know the pump needs attention, potentially limiting the chance someone can help with it without being asked specifically.

I have a few other ideas, but just wanted to list one that I have been mulling over.

Does anyone else have any ideas, or other systems already in place?

I understand that this is not something a hospital can just implement, it would have to be worked out with the pump manufacturer etc. Also I think though it might be most helpful at night, it would also be nice for the day crew when they don't have frustrated family at the door looking for someone to fix the pump every 10 minutes.

Let me know your thoughts!

Taitter

[perfectbluebuildings, BSN, RN]

A majority of our IV pumps now have a cord that plugs into the call light system, so that a particular alarm sounds at the desk when the IV alarms for any reason. Although we were not eager to start this system, it has turned out to be a great idea, as long as we can keep around enough pumps with the cords on them. Our floor is long hallways, and families tended to sleep through the IV alarms, so if you were busy in another room or on another part of the floor, an IV could alarm for quite awhile without being attended to and clot off.

[all4schwa]

a pager would just be another thing to carry in addition to our phones and cardiac monitor pagers, the team leader pager, ect.

a cord that went to the call light would just be another cord to unhook and untangle. our vents hook to the call lights though and that proves to be very useful.

not to be a debby downer, just my $0.02

[mcknis]

Great idea to have it plug in, but I can see some nurses "delegating" this task of turning off IV alarms to the aides/assistive personnel.

[Logan]

Hi,

I do believe I like your "pager" idea.

I don't like adding on more cords - we already have emough to deal with.

But a pager seems do able. Heck! Anything that doesn't wake up sleeping kiddos

thanks,

Matthew

[perfectbluebuildings, BSN, RN]

Well, all I can say is that the cords have worked well for us for over a year now. The pager idea is good, too, if it could be engineered.

[Tait, MSN, RN]

Hmmm

Maybe instead of a pager per nurse, there could be just a central pager to the clerk and they could inform the nurse. Since most of us use phones they could just call the phone and let us know.

This is a hard item to sell unless it is easy to implement and not too costly.

Hmmm...just brainstorming.

I like the cord idea, and like anything else it will have its pros and cons.

Tait

[AprilRNhere]

I would LOVE an IV system that plugs into the call light.