User:Sbruey/Defensive Monitoring

Defensive Monitoring

Defensive Monitoring is a new category for patient monitoring in the hospital today. The practice is defined as using a wireless system of wearable devices and a computer base station to continuously monitor a patient’s basic vital signs: respiratory rate, heart rate, non-invasive blood pressure and pulse oximetry, and to notify caregivers when necessary. This practice is performed on any patient in the hospital verses on those who are traditionally monitored, such as on cardiac telemetry units or in critical care units. Thus the term “Defensive Monitoring” that serves as a proactive mechanism to detect changes in the patient that may go unrecognized otherwise and is targeted to assist caregivers and hospital administrators to reduce adverse events in this subgroup of patients.

Patient safety and workflow efficiency are two areas where hospitals face the most limiting challenges. The fact that nearly 15 million instances of medical harm occur in the U.S. each year drove the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) to initiate the highly successful 100,000 Lives Campaign in 2004 and the subsequent 5 Million Lives Campaign during the period of December 2006 to December 2008. Of the 12 major interventions the IHI campaign promotes to reduce harm in hospitals, the top one is the deployment of Rapid Response Teams (RRT) at the first sign of patient health decline. The idea behind the RRT concept is to bring critical care experts to the patient to assess their condition and to initiate critical care practices as soon as possible when the condition warrants it. The limitation of this concept though is that someone must determine that the RRT is needed and initiate that call.

Defensive Monitoring employs a constant surveillance and notification system to draw the caregiver’s attention to the patient who needs them; it becomes the eyes and ears of the nurse when the nurse is not with the patient and it helps them to prioritize their time to the patients who need them the most.

Defensive Monitoring supports the current hospital quality initiatives by shortening the time a patient’s condition starts to deteriorate and the time the clinician is notified. Quicker interventions help to avoid incidents of medical harm and failure to rescue scenarios in hospitals today.

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