Over a recent four-year period, the U.S. FDA received more than 500 reports of patient deaths related to alarms on monitoring devices.  Alarm safety is receiving media attention with the recent deaths in US hospitals.  These deaths have brought collective attention to staff being inundated with information and alarms and that risk this poses to patient care.   

In addition, you know the life safety part of your survey is going to be longer this year, but do you still feel unprepared? Don’t know how to assess your own compliance with the top scored environment of care and life safety standards.  Checklist tools will be provided that are to be used by clinical or floor staff to assess their own compliance and identify compliance issues before The Joint Commission can find them… the tool which can be customized in your hospital helps you stay in continuous compliance with these critical standards.  

During the course of this 90-minute webinar, former Joint Commission surveyor and former director of operations at The Joint Commission Jennifer Cowel will provide insight on the issue of alarm fatigue and clarify the life safety and environment issues that result in findings from The Joint Commission. She will provide strategies on improving alarm safety and will provide tools to assess your own compliance with the top scored LS and EC standards so your patients and staff are safe, you maintain accreditation, and continue to receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the issue and causes of alarm fatigue.
• Explain why alarm fatigue is an important patient safety issue.
• List strategies you can implement to reduce the risk of a negative patient outcome.
• Discuss three ways EC or LS can lead to an immediate threat during survey.
• Describe the top scored EC & LS standards.
• Explain how clinical staff can help prepare.

Target Audience:

• Compliance officers
• Director of accreditation 
• Chief nursing officers (CNO)
• Nurse educators, nurse directors and nurse managers 
• COO
• Chief administration officers
• CEOs and Executives
• Patient safety officers (PSO)
• Risk Managers and Chief Risk Officers 
• PI directors 
• Joint Commission coordinators 
• Directors of facilities
• Director of operations
• Plant Operations
• Anyone responsible for Joint Commission accreditation, quality, clinical managers in a hospital or the life safety and facilities managers in health care organizations

Level: All Levels 

Meet your Expert:

Jennifer Cowel joined Patton Healthcare Consulting, LLC as Vice President and Principal in 2007.  Previously, she held a variety of leadership and management roles during more than 17 years with The Joint Commission.  Jennifer is the author of two reference books for both domestic and international hospital managers on practical application and use of statistics. She is also a frequent lecturer on the use of data to measure performance and improve core measures.  Jennifer received her Bachelor of Science Nursing degree from Indiana University and her master’s degree in Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.

Participation:

AHC Media webinars may be attended in an audio-only format, but we encourage attendees to take advantage of the webinar feature as it may allow you to participate in interactive survey questions throughout the presentation. Each listener participates in the continuing education activity by listening to the webinar/audio conference and completing the online post test and evaluation.

Accreditation Statement:

AHC Media is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

Credit Designation:

This activity has been approved for 1.5 nursing contact hours using a 60-minute contact hour.

Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider # 14749, for 1.5 Contact Hours.

Sponsor:

The sponsor of this educational activity is AHC Media.

Recorded: Tuesday, October 18, 2011