Alarm fatigue

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

What is your facility doing to combat alarm fatigue, which has been given Sentinel Event status by the Joint Commission?

http://www.jointcommission.org/sea_issue_50/

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

It annoys me to call it alarm fatigue. ANSWER THE ALARMS! Grrrrr...it is a pet peeve of mine.

It deserves the Sentinel status.....patients have died because of this.

We have set guidelines about checking alarms....time limits to answering and clearing alarms every shift.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

ANA has an entire toolkit you can download regarding this issue. I'm doing this as my special project for the year at my hospital.

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The number one best patient condition alarm is the competent bedside nurse with enough time to check often. If there were more of them we wouldn't need so many gadgets that then make too much noise that the too-few nurses can't respond to fast enough.

yeah, yeah, I know.

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Are y'all referring only to actual alarms, or to call lights as well?

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

monitor alarms.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.
Are y'all referring only to actual alarms, or to call lights as well?

In my facility, we have a committee, (which I am part of) that is combating all alarms including call lights.

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