Description:

Healthcare is an ever-changing field, and for bedside clinicians, there is a larger mental burden than ever before, with exceedingly high daily stressors, including alarms and alarm fatigue. Excessive alarms and high stress can lead to burnout for many staff, and the potential for negative impacts on the quality and safety of patient care. New technologies can help to support clinical staff by allowing handheld visualizations of waveforms (and other vitals) of alarming patients, support management of alarms (silence nuisance alarms), and send a message to another staff member to check on your alarming patient if you cannot in that moment, without having to leave another patient’s bedside. These new innovations not only improve communications from technology to providers, but between clinical staff to allow close loop electronic communication, all while supporting a response to an actionable alarm, which helps to improve patient care, decrease alarm fatigue, and decrease the mental load of the bedside staff. 

 

Learning Objectives:

After this activity, the participant will be able to:

1.     Describe current state of alarms in healthcare environment

2.     Describe optimal practices in clinical monitoring and alarm management 

3.     Utilize case reviews as examples of new alarm technology supporting a decreased mental load for bedside clinicians 

 

 

Faculty Bio

Dr. Joseph is the CEO of ThriveIn LLC Healthcare Consulting, a certified Clinical Nurse Specialist, with a focus in cardiac resuscitation. Previously, she was the Director of Patient Experience at the Yale New Haven Health Center in London, CT. Previously, Dr. Joseph was Program Director of Emergency Cardiovascular Care Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston as well as the Director of Simulation Education, Department of Nursing at the same institution. Additionally, Dr. Joseph has worked in a variety of fields and specialties as a Legal Nurse Expert Consultant, an Inter-Professional Education (IPE) Consultant as well as conducting clinical research with focus on resuscitation. Dr. Joseph has been an invited speaker at numerous medical conferences.