Variations in Alarm Burden, Source, and Cause Across Inpatient Units at a Children’s Hospital

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Alarms at hospitals are frequent and can lead to alarm fatigue posing patient safety risks. We aimed to describe alarm burden over a 1-year period and explored variations in alarm rates stratified by unit type, alarm source, and cause. METHODS A retrospective study of inpatient alarm and patient census data at 1 children’s hospital from January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2019, including 8 inpatient units: 6 medical/surgical unit (MSU), 1 PICU, and 1 NICU. Rates of alarms per patient day (appd) were calculated overall and by unit type, alarm source, and cause. Poisson regression was used for comparisons. RESULTS There were 7 934 997 alarms over 84 077 patient days (94.4 appd). Significant differences in alarm rates existed across inpatient unit types (MSU 81.3 appd, PICU 90.7, NICU 117.5). Pulse oximetry (POx) probes were the alarm source with highest rate, followed by cardiorespiratory leads (54.4 appd versus 31). PICU had lowest rate of POx alarms (33.3 appd, MSU 37.6, NICU 92.6), whereas NICU had lowest rate of cardiorespiratory lead alarms (16.2 appd, MSU 40.1, PICU 31.4). Alarms stratified by cause displayed variation across unit types where “low oxygen saturation” had the highest overall rate, followed by “technical” alarms (43.4 appp versus 16.3). ICUs had higher rates of low oxygenation saturation alarms, but lower rates of technical alarms than MSUs. CONCLUSIONS Clinical alarms are frequent and vary across unit types, sources, and causes. Unit-level alarm rates and frequent alarm sources (eg, POx) should be considered when implementing alarm reduction strategies.