Alarm Fatigue Survey

dwoolard · May 29, 2014

Results:

Alarm fatigue has become a national patient safety concern for hospitals, the Joint Commission, and Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI). The Joint Commission, a hospital governing body, created new standards of care that all hospitals must address in a two part phase 2014 and 2016. The aim of the research was to receive input from nurses who work at different hospital systems to develop recommendations to reduce the presence of alarm fatigue. Alarm fatigue describes the phenomenon of when nurses do not respond to patient’s medical alarms that could signal a medical emergency. Nurses who were selected came from a pool of Allnurses.com members. The participants worked in two different alarm management systems, nurse driven alarm management and technician driven management. Based on the data received, both hospital structures produce alarm fatigue felt by the nurses. Nurses recommended that changing alarm limits and changing the electrodes on a daily basis would reduce the number of false alarms.

After completing a literature review and reviewing the data from the study, hospitals should focus on three main areas: Staff perceptions on alarms, hospital structure, and technology. Staff needs to be educated on the alarm management technology and software in order to use the technology to its fullest potential. Policies are needed to standardize the alarm protocols for each individual hospital that works for their hospital structure, staffing ratios, and technology. The hospital structure should be designed with input from a multidisciplinary team to ensure all different needs are met for an adequate alarm system. When reviewing different alarm management technology systems to purchase the multidisciplinary team is needed as well. This will help make the purchase of which technology vendor is the best fit for the hospital based on their individual needs. Alarm fatigue is prevalent among all institutions and becoming a growing problem. By having different parties come together, a solution can be made to prevent patient injury caused by alarm fatigue.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · May 29, 2014

How can you possibly know that anonymous respondents on an internet board that exists solely for entertainment (see the thread on why AllNurses declines to support bona fide research by having a forum to promulgate and discuss it) are, in fact, RNs, and do, in fact, have standing and experience to give you meaningful results?

Hint: You can't. Suggest that you go speak to actual working nurses in hospitals near you to get a more accurate sample, with appropriate demographics, and search the Boston Globe reports of how a major Boston teaching hospital published reports of how a nurse-driven research team decreased alarms by 80%, making alarm fatigue much less likely. Else there can be no confidence that your "research" is worth the electrons to post it with.

dwoolard · May 29, 2014

Per the term of my agreement with Allnurses.com, I was only required to post a summary of my findings. My full project/thesis has all the limitations you are referring too. Plus the recommendation section is quite extensive and I do not have permission from my school to publish my full thesis. Thank you for your comments.

Columnist · May 30, 2014

We thank you very much for using allnurses as a means to gather information for your research. We appreciate the fact that you provided a summary of your findings. Please feel free to add any further details of your findings that you think might benefit our readers.

We wish you well in your endeavors.

tnbutterfly

Community Manager