Patient safety

How to manage monitor alarms

Other platforms explain it with text and video. In VMS you practice it on the patient.

Nursing (NCLEX)
Practice it in VR with Blocky

Too many alarms make staff tune them out, which is called alarm fatigue. The Joint Commission names alarm safety as a patient safety goal.

Step by step

  1. Set patient-specific limits

    Adjust heart rate, oxygen and pressure limits to the patient and the orders, not just factory defaults. [1]

  2. Prepare the skin

    Clean and dry the skin and change electrodes daily to reduce false alarms. [1]

  3. Check the volume

    Make sure alarms are loud enough to hear from the hallway or central station. [1]

  4. Look at the patient first

    When an alarm sounds, go to the patient and assess before you look at the screen. [2]

  5. Fix the cause

    Treat a true problem right away. For a false alarm, fix the lead, probe or setting. [1]

  6. Never turn alarms off

    Pause only briefly while you act. Do not disable an alarm without an order and policy. [1]

  7. Hand off settings

    Share alarm limits and recent alarms at handoff. [1]

Common errors

Practice it in VMS

In VMS you do this on the patient, not on paper: every step goes on the checklist with a score, and in Teach mode Blocky tells you what comes next.

VMS cases that train this skill

7 VMS cases train this skill: open the case library

Sources

  1. The Joint Commission, National Patient Safety Goals
  2. Open RN, Nursing Skills 2e (Chippewa Valley Technical College) (CC BY 4.0)

Facts and steps follow The Joint Commission, National Patient Safety Goals. VMS is not affiliated with these organizations. Updated: 2026-10-11.