Determining Root Cause
The root causes of this event are rather interesting. One cause relates to the use of a mixture of monitoring systems of different designs. In some systems, default alarms are set automatically. In others, they are set with a push of a button. Neither the registry nurse nor the ER knew of these conditions.. If either had known, the adverse event might not have occurred. If the ER had known the nature of the alarm and had failed to train all nurses to use it, the ER would have been negligent. During investigational interviews, we encountered one regular ER nurse who said she knew that the monitor alarms were set automatically. She attempted to prove this by applying ECG electrodes to her body and inserting the ECG cable into a monitor. When her ECG was visible on the monitor, she lifted one of the electrodes from her body and an alarm sounded, but it was a leads-off alarm. The nurse did not know the difference between a leads-off alarm and a heart rate alarm