Monitoring the Critically III, Pregnant Patient

Relationship Between Nighttime Vital Sign Assessments and Acute Care Transfers in the Rehabilitation Inpatient

“…Those patients with a constellation of vital sign abnormalities and other worrisome clinical signs and symptoms may warrant more frequent monitoring, whereas those without a concerning assortment of subjective and objective findings might benefit from less frequent (or less disruptive) monitoring. For example, as tachypnea is a particularly important indicator of an at‐risk patient and is the most common abnormality found in critical illness (Goldhill, McNarry, Hadjianastassiou, & Tekkis, ; Goldhill, Worthington, Mulcahy, Tarling, & Sumner, ; Jevon & Ewens, ), perhaps respiratory rate should be the sole measured nighttime vital sign in rehabilitation inpatients deemed clinically stable as respiratory rate can be measured without disturbing a patient's sleep.…”

Model-Driven Safety Analysis of Closed-Loop Medical Systems

“…For the case study, we defined the threshold as $H_1^{{\mathrm{SpO}}_2}=90\%$ for the SpO 2 and $H_1^{\mathrm{HR}}=57\text{beats}∕min$ for heart rate. Values below these thresholds typically indicate “a clinical concern” ([13], p. 45), meaning that a caregiver needs to be notified. The supervisor notifies the caregiver when the threshold is crossed, as it sends the message to stop the pump.…”

Inappropriate trust in technology: implications for critical care nurses

“…If we consider the monitoring of blood pressure via an arterial transducer, reliable performance of the monitor system might be defined as the equipment providing an accurate display of the patient's actual blood pressure at any moment. The accuracy of the information obviously depends on the correct functioning of the electronic circuitry within the monitor itself, but there are also a number of other possible external sources of error such as position of the transducer or occlusion of the cannula (Jevons and Ewens, 2002), which may affect the accuracy of the reading. Therefore, it is possible that, at times, the displayed value for the blood pressure will not be an accurate reflection of the true value, even though the monitor is actually working properly.…”

“…The modern ICU is an environment in which a heavy reliance is placed on technology to carry out a range of functions concerned with both monitoring patients' physiological status and delivering treatments in the form of drugs and various types of respiratory support (Jevons and Ewens, 2002). The ICU nurse is the practitioner with the closest contact with patients and, therefore, the greatest level of interaction with the technological equipment associated with the patients' care (Donchin et al , 1995).…”