Exam Fatigue: A Case Study

Alarm fatigue is a growing national problem within the health care industry that links medical technology as a serious hazard that poses a significant threat to patient safety within hospitals across the country. Alarm fatigue occurs when nurses encounter an overwhelming amount of alarms thus becoming desensitized to the firing alarms. Alarm desensitization is a multifaceted issue that is related to the number of alarming medical devices, a high false alarm rate, and the lack of alarm standardization in hospitals today (Cvach, 2012). Desensitization can lead to delayed response times, alarms silenced or turned off, or alarms adjusted to unsafe limits, which can create a dangerous situation for the patient. Alarm fatigue

Alarm fatigue in health care has grown to be an ever-growing concern in the health care arena, especially when looking at patient safety concerns. There must be an understanding of the problem before we can develop policies and effective strategies to counter this problem. The concept of alarm fatigue in health care will be evaluated utilizing the method developed by Walker and Avant (2010) that identifies and gives the significance of the attributes, antecedents, and end-consequences of alarm fatigue in health care. This will be developed based

In Cvach’s (2012) article, an integrated review synthesized research and non-research findings of seventy-two articles, published between 1/1/2000 and 10/1/2011. The author used the John Hopkins Nursing Evidence Based-Practice model to measure and evaluate the articles for this review. The data collected were categorized into 5 main themes: excessive alarms and the effects on nurses, nurse's response to alarms, alarm sounds and audibility, technology to reduce false alarms, and alarm notification system (Cvach, 2012). The purpose of this integrated review was to find out if the volume of noise (false alarms vs true alarms) disrupts the nurse’s response and perception to physiologic clinical alarms. The 3 main recommendations provided by the researcher were to implement the use of smart technology, generate change within the hospital's environment and protocols, and use of precautionary measures by healthcare staff in order to reduce monitor alarm fatigue.

The definition of Alarm Fatigue is a situation where people become desensitized to alarms in response to excessive exposure (merriam- webster dictionary). Alarm fatigue also causes attention spans to be lowered which affects Nurses readiness for an emergency on their shift. Alarms can be overwhelming and all alarm alerts are designed differently. In an environment of constant urgency Nurses have even been described as ignoring the alarms or being negligent. There are also many different alarm terms, from false alarms and high sensitivity alarms to nuisance alarms. With so many alarm-related terms it is relevant to ensure proper understanding of these the terms to reduce risky

A fatigued nurse can lead to many errors and compromise the care given to a patient. Nurse fatigue has been found to increase depression. If a nurse has an altered mindset to begin with, they will not be able to take care of anyone else adequately. Nurse fatigue can also increase irritability. A nurse with increased irritability could lead the nurse to make irrational decisions. The nurse with sleep deprivation has an increased risk for error. A nurse is responsible for administering drugs. When a nurse is extremely tired, it could lead them to mess up the medications prescribed for the patient or to overlook reactions that the patient may experience from the medications. The nurse is also responsible for focusing on the care provided to the patient. A fatigued nurse could be too tired to notice crucial changes in the patient. The fatigued nurse will be affected in his or her performance. Nurse fatigue could also result in the nurses injuring themselves. Nurse fatigue could influence a nurse to make shortcuts and that can also endanger the nurse. For example, if a nurse has to lift a patient using a hoyer lift, but misjudges the situation because of lack of energy, the nurse could end up lifting the patient by herself and hurting her back. This is how nurse fatigue relates to the safety of the practicing nurse and patient

When nurses experience fatigue due to excessive overtime, effects that can occur are reduced decision making ability, reduced communication skills, increased forgetfulness, increased tendency of risk taking, reduced ability to handle stress on the job, decreased ability to do complex planning, and inability to recall details which can all danger patients wellbeing. Unfortunately even with all the

Horkan, A. M. (2014). Exploring the Evidence Alarm Fatigue and Patient Safety. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 41(1), 83-85.

Alert fatigue and using a clinical decision support system (CDS) in an electronic health record is a growing concern in health care. Although alerts and warnings in an EHR are well intended, the volume of alerts EHR end-users receive is surprising. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) estimates that in some EHR end-users have the potential to receive over 100 CDS alerts per day (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2015, p. 1). This cause’s alert fatigue when the end-users become desentized to the alerts and even the most important alerts become meaningless.

After exposure to repetitive and continuous alarms, nurses may become desensitized or overwhelmed with the number of alarms to respond to; this phenomenon is known as alarm fatigue (Graham & Cvach, 2010). Alarm fatigue can lead to dangerous practices such as turning off alarms, silencing alarms without evaluating or troubleshooting this issue, changing the alarm parameter to unreasonably broad settings, or complete disregard of the alarm (Ulrich, 2013). A significant contributing factor is the number of duplicate or false positive alarms nurses experience each shift, with studies showing that anywhere from 72-99 percent of alarms in the clinical setting are false or non-emergent (Graham & Cvach, 2010). Although alarm fatigue is commonly associated with critical care areas, it may occur in any patient care area with frequent or repetitive alarms (Gross, Dahl & Nielsen, 2011). In addition to causing a permanent harm or death, clinical alarms also contribute to noise levels in patient care areas, which in turn can cause insomnia or delirium.

Fatigue is defined as a feeling of tiredness or exhaustion or a need to rest because of lack of energy or strength. Fatigue in nurses directly affects the quality of care that the nurse gives to a patient. Nurse fatigue can be described as fatigue affecting the nurse population that may result from the following contributing factors: working long shifts in the healthcare workplace; obtaining insufficient sleep between scheduled shifts; a disturbance in circadian rhythms; and attempting to balance demanding personal, familial, and social obligations in addition to the work schedule. This article explains the implications of nursing fatigue.

The Overpressured student A recent study conducted in New York University found that, “ Nearly half (49%) of all students reported feeling a great deal of stress on a daily basis and 31 percent reported feeling somewhat stressed. Females reported significantly higher levels of stress than males (60% vs. 41%)” (James, 2015). Many schools and parents brainwash their students to believing that in order to succeed in life one must pursue education to the highest degree. The argument ‘The Overpressured Student’ by Richard Weissbourd, argued that students are drove to be overachievers in education which causes an imbalance in schools. By combining ethos, logos, and strong premises; the author adequately persuades the reader.

Alarm fatigue is a critical problem in health care setting. Nurses may not respond to alarms because they know that most of them are false or non-actionable. Sometimes, the alarms become the noises that nurses no longer hear because they are heard all the time. In addition to ignore alarms, nurses may also reduce audible alarm levels, change alarm limits, and inappropriately silence or deactivate alarms (Cvach, 2012). The alarm fatigue has led to sentinel events and deaths of patients (Cvach, 2012). Therefore, the alarm fatigue problem has to be fixed in order to improve patient safety. This paper will introduce interventions based on evidence-based practices and leadership theories related to alarm fatigue prevention.

Eric, thank you for choosing such a significant topic for your paper. Alarm fatigue is a big problem in the healthcare field. Sentinel events related to alarm fatigue is something that is totally preventable. It’s interesting our body gets trained and used to hearing certain sounds after awhile where we don’t find these sounds even bothersome. Or we have developed a way to block out these sounds and still stay focus on our task at hand. If an alarm has the option, I like to change my patient’s alarm sound to a sound that I don’t hear often so that way it quickly catches my attention and my coworkers as well during my shift. I work in the ICU where I am closely monitoring my two patients and every bed has a bed alarm built inside the mattress.

According to the Alert Program website, the program helps children, teachers, parents, and therapists to choose strategies to maintain states of alertness. For example, students can learn how to change their

4. Roommate conflict is almost the first one that comes as starting life on campus. College students are forced to live with people who may have different values, beliefs, schedules, and habits than they do. There’s nothing worse than having to sleep in the same room as someone you’d normally hate or never talk to.