The American Association of Respiratory Care (AARC) reports that a large number of AARC members responded to the Healthcare Technology Foundation’s (HTF) survey on alarms. The survey was a follow up to a 2006 survey to determine changes in the perception of clinical alarm issues, improvements made at facilities, and priorities for future action.
The HTF requested the AARC’s participation to include the perceptions of respiratory therapists in the survey. In the final results, it was noted that RTs responded in larger numbers than any other group asked to participate.
The survey found that less than 20% of the respondents reported that their health care facility has instituted technological solutions to improve clinical alarm safety. Only one in five said that their facility had developed alarm improvement initiatives over the past 2 years.
The survey had 4,278 responses and RTs comprise nearly half of all respondents.
“The most common alarm devices that respiratory therapists encounter on a daily basis are on mechanical ventilators and monitoring devices,” said Tom Kallstrom, chief operating officer of AARC. “It is imperative that when a device sounds it is responded to. Thus, the need for a differentiation of alarm is essential both in display and sound.”
The full survey can be found here. It was sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, the American College of Clinical Engineering, and Philips Healthcare.
Source: AARC
