Telemazing Collaboration: A Multiple Hospital Working Group to Develop Human Factors Guidelines for Centralized Cardiac Telemetry Monitoring

Abstract

Centralized cardiac telemetry monitoring introduces multiple complexities to the already complex environment of healthcare. Many aspects of setup and implementation of these systems can have negative impacts on the safety and effectiveness of their use. However, while there is much literature on the clinical side regarding which patients should be on telemetry, there is a lack of guidance on the ideal setup of the operational side of these systems. Human factors practitioners from several healthcare systems across the United States identified that similar issues were being faced by all of their hospitals, and that many of these issues can be informed by human factors research. This article summarizes the collaboration between these human factors practitioners to develop guidelines to inform the implementation of centralized cardiac telemetry monitoring. The team used virtual tools to facilitate an affinity diagramming session to identify themes amongst the telemetry-related issues faced by each represented healthcare system. These themes were further refined into topics and subtopics to guide the creation of specific guidelines. The process to date will be shared at the 2024 International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care to strategically gather feedback from others on the structure and use of the guidelines. This collaboration effort serves as a model for cohesively addressing complex issues faced across the industry.