A Survey of Patient Monitoring Alarms in Cardiac Care Units / 中国医疗器械杂志

OBJECTIVE@#The patient monitors were used to explore the alarm fatigue in a cardiac care unit and to investigate the awareness and reaction of nurse to alarms.@*METHODS@#A semi-structured survey was taken to acquire nurses' feeling and knowledge about monitoring alarm. Three full-time researchers were scheduled to track the alarms with annotations, and analyze the alarm data of 12 patient monitors using central monitoring system.@*RESULTS@#A total of 72 310 unique alarms occurred in the 67-day study period. About 75.7% of them were physiological alarms and less than 10% of medium-low alarms were false positives. The average alarm rate was 128 alarms/patient-day.@*CONCLUSIONS@#There remains alarm fatigue in CCU, the alarm accuracy has improved than the past by applying new technologies. In some cases, clinicians will pay more attention to trend alarm and combination alarm.

Survey on Factors Related to Anxiety in Families of Patients in Cardiac Care Unit / 中国康复理论与实践

@#Objective To investigate the factors related to anxiety in families of patients in cardiac care unit(CCU).Methods The family members of 50 CCU patients had been given questionnaires to evaluate their anxiety and correlative factors.Results The factors related to anxiety of families of CCU patients were the environment of emergency department,the disease knowledge and so on.Conclusion Reducing the anxious level of patients' families by proper nursing interventions can be helpful to family members' physical and mental health.