Dataset for "Understanding Respiratory Alarm Management in the Intensive Care Unit: A Computer Method to Annotate Oxygen Saturation Alarms"

<p>Chromik and Flint et al. (2023) (under review) propose an algorithm that uses clinical alarm logs, an annotation guideline (Klopfenstein et al. 2023), and routinely collected intensive care data to create a data set of relevance-annotated oxygen saturation alarms. We provide the algorithm's source code and data set of annotated oxygen saturation alarms as supplementary material to the publication.</p><ul><li>The algorithm's implementation is open-source and can be re-used on similar data sets.</li><li>Our implementation used airway management data mappings to identify airway devices (AD), ventilation devices (VD), and ventilation modes (VM). These mappings can be found here: <a href="https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.7511031">https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.7511031</a></li><li>The data set suggests that the majority of oxygen saturation alarms in the intensive care unit is non-actionable.</li><li>We are the first to provide such an extensive data set of annotated oxygen saturation alarms.</li></ul&gt

Staff perspectives on the influence of patient characteristics on alarm management in the intensive care unit: a cross-sectional survey study

Abstract Background High rates of clinical alarms in the intensive care unit can result in alarm fatigue among staff. Individualization of alarm thresholds is regarded as one measure to reduce non-actionable alarms. The aim of this study was to investigate staff’s perceptions of alarm threshold individualization according to patient characteristics and disease status. Methods This is a cross-sectional survey study (February-July 2020). Intensive care nurses and physicians were sampled by convenience. Data was collected using an online questionnaire. Results Staff view the individualization of alarm thresholds in the monitoring of vital signs as important. The extent to which alarm thresholds are adapted from the normal range varies depending on the vital sign monitored, the reason for clinical deterioration, and the professional group asked. Vital signs used for hemodynamic monitoring (heart rate and blood pressure) were most subject to alarm individualizations. Staff are ambivalent regarding the integration of novel technological features into alarm management. Conclusions All relevant stakeholders, including clinicians, hospital management, and industry, must collaborate to establish a “standard for individualization,” moving away from ad hoc alarm management to an intelligent, data-driven alarm management. Making alarms meaningful and trustworthy again has the potential to mitigate alarm fatigue – a major cause of stress in clinical staff and considerable hazard to patient safety. Trial registration The study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03514173) on 02/05/2018