Increasing Patient Safety in Emergency Department Waiting Room Patients with Wearable Devices

This poster will discuss the implementation of patient wearable technology to monitor patients ECG rhythm and vital signs in ED waiting areas until they are able to get to a monitored bed. The wearable integrated technology has provided a safer patient environment by allowing continuous monitoring of higher risk patients, thus decreasing negative outcomes for patients with long ED wait times.

The improved outcomes of this implementation include the ability to monitor patient vital signs and ECG rhythm of higher risk patients that are in the ED waiting room, EMS offload areas, and continuous flow areas. This allows clinicians to see if a patient's condition is declining prior to the patient being placed in a monitored ED bed that has central monitoring. The wearable technology has provided a decrease in negative outcomes for patients with a longer wait time for an ED bed.

The problem we are trying to address is negative outcomes in an overcrowded ED waiting room due to the lack of available monitored beds in the ED. With this wearable technology integrated with our EHR, a central monitoring system will be available for patients that are scattered across several waiting areas within the ED as well as hallway beds. This will provide clinicians with real-time viewing of the patient ECG tracing as well as automatic interval vital signs, such as o2 sat and blood pressure reading. If a patient's vital signs start to decline, the clinicians will be able to respond immediately and provide potential life-saving interventions. Research articles report that the sooner life-saving interventions can be implemented, the higher the chance of a positive outcome for the patient.