Description

Patient Monitoring Information Systems generate alarms that are designed to make the clinician aware of the condition of a patient, but frequent false alarm occurrence can result in alarm fatigue and reduce the probability of a clinician to respond to the alarms. The purpose of this paper is to develop a simulation model to investigate the effect of false alarms and different alarm routing policies on clinician workload and patient safety. In this preliminary work, we present results related to two alarm routing policies: 1) all alarms routed to the nurse, and 2) role-based routing of alarms. We modeled the alarm generation and response process and the routing policies using JaamSim, open-source discrete event simulation software. The preliminary result suggests that role-based routing of alarms can significantly reduce the time spent on false alarms, clinician workload and patient safety in terms of number of missed critical alarms.

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A Simulation Model for Evaluating Alarm Routing Policies in ICU Patient Monitoring Information Systems

Patient Monitoring Information Systems generate alarms that are designed to make the clinician aware of the condition of a patient, but frequent false alarm occurrence can result in alarm fatigue and reduce the probability of a clinician to respond to the alarms. The purpose of this paper is to develop a simulation model to investigate the effect of false alarms and different alarm routing policies on clinician workload and patient safety. In this preliminary work, we present results related to two alarm routing policies: 1) all alarms routed to the nurse, and 2) role-based routing of alarms. We modeled the alarm generation and response process and the routing policies using JaamSim, open-source discrete event simulation software. The preliminary result suggests that role-based routing of alarms can significantly reduce the time spent on false alarms, clinician workload and patient safety in terms of number of missed critical alarms.