Katharine Colton, Theresa Dinardo, Peter F Hu, Wei Xiong, Eric Z Hu, George Reed, Joseph J DuBose, Lynn G Stansbury, Colin F Mackenzie, William C Chiu, Catriona Miller, Raymond Fang, Deborah M Stein, Thomas M Scalea
We examined the types of patient monitor alarms encountered in the trauma resuscitation unit of a major level 1 trauma center. Over a 1-year period, 316688 alarms were recorded for 6701 trauma patients (47 alarms/patient). Alarms were more frequent among patients with a Glasgow Coma Scale of 8 or less. Only 2.4% of all alarms were classified as "patient crisis," with the rest in the presumably less critical categories "patient advisory," "patient warning," and "system warning." Nearly half of alarms were ≤5 seconds in duration...
October 2013: Journal of Trauma Nursing: the Official Journal of the Society of Trauma Nurses