Table 1.
Approaches for solving the alarm/alert safety crisis.
Table 2.
Approaches for solving the alarm/alert safety crisis.
Table 3.
Patient simulation scenarios with actionable and non-actionable alarms (n depicts the number of events).
Fig 1.
The HAIL-CAT (Human Alerting and Interruption Logistics—Clinical Alarm Triage) wearable attention aid prototype.
The smartwatch application has four screens: (A) list of all alarms/alerts (blue marks silenced; orange marks not-silenced); (B) home screen list of five patients (including number of current alarms/alerts); (C) list of alarms/alerts for selected patient; (D & F) alarm/alert announcement with message and vitals context. "E" shows a nurse participant (standing and wearing the prototype on her right wrist). She is checking a "patient" (a patient simulation mannequin in the bed) while speaking with a "family member" (experimental confederate) who sits nearby. In addition to triaging alarms/alerts, the smartwatch enabled nurses to check the vital signs for any patient at any time by selecting the patient from the home screen. The vital signs screen is the same as "D" or "F," but without the alarm/alert message and "silence" buttons.
Table 4.
Tests of normality on data for time to respond to important alarms.
Table 5.
Time to respond to important alarms (minutes).
Fig 2.
Cumulative total time for all 16 nurses to respond to important alarms (minutes).
These are sums of response times (split by condition) for all experimental trials across the entire simulated acute care unit.
Fig 3.
Cumulative total time to respond to important alarms split by participant (minutes).
These are sums of response times (split by condition and participant) for all experimental trials across the entire simulated acute care unit.
Table 6.
Relative within-subjects response to important alarms/alerts.
Table 7.
Trial condition metrics for analysis of potential secondary effects.
Table 8.
Analyses of potential secondary effects by trial condition.
Table 9.
Conclusions of analyses results for potential secondary effects by trial condition.
Table 10.
Analyses of potential secondary effects within subjects.
Fig 4.
Nurses’ subjective opinions comparing their performance with and without HAIL-CAT.
Fig 5.
A sample of nurse quotes from a semi-structured exit interview about their impressions of using the HAIL-CAT aid wearable.