Implementing an institution-wide quality improvement policy to ensure appropriate use of continuous cardiac monitoring: a mixed-methods retrospective data analysis and direct observation study.

Background: Hospitals have been slow to adopt guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA) limiting the use of continuous cardiac monitoring for fear of missing important patient cardiac events. A new continuous cardiac monitoring policy was implemented at a tertiary-care hospital seeking to monitor only those patients who were clinically indicated and decrease the number of false alarms in order to improve overall alarm response.

Methods: Leadership support was secured, a cross-functional alarm management task force was created, and a system-wide policy was developed based on current AHA guidelines.

A nurse-managed smoking cessation intervention during diagnostic testing for lung cancer.

Purpose/objectives: To determine the effectiveness of a nurse-managed smoking cessation intervention.

Design: Prospective, descriptive, one-group, pretest/post-test.

Setting: Urban, academic, tertiary-care setting.