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Instructor’s Guide – Sound the Alarm
Overview:
This story is about how staff response to safety alarms and patient call lights is essential to ensure patient safety. Preventing patient harm due to falls requires effective strategies and protocols in addition to team vigilance.
Primary Learning Outcomes
After completing this lesson, the student will be able to:
- Explain the factors that affect team response to bed alarms or call signals.
- Describe team strategies to reduce patient falls through improved response to alarms or call signals.
QSEN Pre-Licensure Competencies
The following QSEN competencies are addressed in this lesson:
- Safety: Minimizes risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance.
Reflection Questions:
Students will answer reflection questions upon completing the story. These questions are aligned with the QSEN competencies and are designed to help the student reflect on both the content of the story and the QSEN competencies addressed by the story.
*Following each question are some potential answers
- What are some reasons that no one responded to Cecil’s alarm? Explain those in the story, as well as others you might infer from the story and your experience.
A: People often do not respond to alarms because they assume “someone else” is going to respond. Healthcare professionals often do not want to be interrupted from their work, to answer an alarm.
- Describe strategies that the team on this floor might be able to use to reduce patient falls and improve their response to alarms and call signals. Identify your top three priorities for improvement based on what you learned in the story.
A: Patients who are at risk for falls can be placed closer to the nurse’s station or closer together, so they are easier to watch. Also, all staff should be informed of the importance of responding to alarms. It is not just the job of the nurse, but every health care professional is responsible.
Discussion Questions:
Use discussion questions for face to face or online discussion boards to get students to further reflect on the content of the story together.
*Following each question are some potential answers
- What can we learn from this story?
A: That we should not assume that someone else is responding to an alarm. Every healthcare professional is responsible to help deter a patient from falling.
- What can you do to influence others on your team to better respond to patient needs?
A: One way is to acknowledge when other nurses help with your own patients. If healthcare professionals work as a team and keep the patient the focus of care then the responsibility does not fall on only one person.
Suggested Classroom Mastery Activities:
These activities can be tailored for individuals or groups in a face to face or online setting.
- Create a poster for the staff areas on this floor that reminds the entire medical team of the importance of working together to prevent patient falls and improve their response to alarms and calls.
- Research other reasons that nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals fail to respond to alarms and calls, and the consequences of their inaction. Share your findings with the class.
Measuring Student Mastery:
Learning Outcome | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 |
Explain the factors that affect team response to bed alarms or call signals. | Student struggles to explain the factors that affect team response to bed alarms or call signals. | Student can explain some factors that affect team response to bed alarms or call signals, but needs more practice. | Student can explain some factors that affect team response to bed alarms or call signals, but needs more practice. |
Describe team strategies to reduce patient falls through improved response to alarms or call signals. | Student struggles to describe team strategies to reduce patient falls through improved response to alarms or call signals. | Student can describe some team strategies to reduce patient falls through improved response to alarms or call signals, but needs more instruction. | Student can accurately describe team strategies to reduce patient falls through improved response to alarms or call signals. |

Additional Story-Specific Resources:
For additional information on improving team communication, please consult the following articles and resources in Further Reading:
Story-Specific Best Practices and Proven Tools:
In addition to the ideas generated by students and mentioned in the activities, there are established best practices that may be appropriate to introduce or reference during this lesson to support communication. Some best practices to consider for improving team communication include:
- Huddles
- STEP
- Cross Monitoring
- Collaboration
- Call-Out
- Task Assistance
- Patient Rounding