Literature Review Of Alarm Fatigue

One thing that is paramount to do is to make sure to identify the patient by two unique identifiers, if this is not done it increase the risk of medication errors and wrong procedures being done. Another thing that is extremely important is effective communication between the members of the health care. To give safe, quality care to a patient, every member of the team needs to be on the same page to ensure no mistakes are made that can harm or injure the patient. Medication errors are another action by the nurse that can be preventable. Medication errors are generally made when the nurse is distracted, talking, or not checking the medication against what the physician ordered properly. Med errors can either be harmless or they can be extremely dangerous and cause a great deal of damage or death. Alarms are a part of the clinical setting that nurses deal with on a daily bases. The alarms are instituted to keep the patient safe, but they can have the opposite effect. If there are too many alarms, too narrow/wide limits, or malfunctioning alarms are just some of the factors that can make it unsafe for a patient. One of the most overlooked National Patient Safety Goal is identifying safety risks within the patient population. An example of a safety risk that is suicidal thoughts. Many people will not think that to ask the patient about suicidal thoughts or they will judge the patient based off of what they see and think that they can’t be suicidal. Whether the nurse does this intentionally or not, these actions can cause many problems. Including the patient committing suicide, self-harming, or going into a depression or other mental illness. The state of mind the patient is going through when they are having these suicidal thoughts may also delay the healing process. Which is why it is incredibly important to screen patients as

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

There are various examples of incidences where sleep deprivation has made 911 dispatchers issue wrong services and consequentially cause injuries or death to people needing the services. In one of the recent cases which happened in 2012, a 911 dispatcher in Maryland failed to order an ambulance despite the efforts of a woman who called to report her husband’s troubled breathing (Clarke). While the

Compassion fatigue is widely known in the health care profession. Nurses working overtime and long working days to provide care for the patient and the patient’s families are a continuous stress on a nurse’s emotional and physical well-being especially if the nurse is providing the patient with end of life care as this contributes to both physical and mental work. Vital

Significance: Because nursing is the largest health care profession and nurses provide most of the patient care, and as an acute nurse, I can relate to how unsafe nurse staffing/low nurse-to-patient ratios can have negative impact on patient satisfaction and outcome, can lead to medical and/or medication errors and nurse burnout. It can also bring about anxiety and frustration, which can also clouds the nurses’ critical thinking. Most patients might not know the work load on a particular nurse and can assume that her nurse is just not efficient. Doctors also can become very impatient with their nurses because orders are not being followed through that can delay treatments to their patients. There is also delays in attending to call lights resulting in very unhappy patients who needed help.

Monitor alarms are designed to alert caregivers to changes in a patient’s condition and can save lives, but majority of the alarms do not require clinical intervention. However, as the number of alarms encountered by clinicians on a daily basis rises, it has become difficult for caregivers to distinguish between clinically significant alarms and nuisance alarms. As a result, alarm fatigue has become a serious issue, which puts patients at risk. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the research findings of two articles to explore more efficient and effective methods to reduce nurse desensitization to clinical

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

Goal 6: Know Your Alarms. Alarms familiarity on your unit is integral to the best patient safety. Take faulty

Back in 2003, the Joint Commission created a National Patient Safety Goal due to 23 occurrences of death or injury to a patient where alarms had been applied incorrectly or the alarms had been muted (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). By 2004, Joint Commission had removed it from their National Patient Safety Goal list and made it a requirement for Joint Commission accreditations (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). In 2013, it was brought to the attention of the Joint Commission regarding many alarm-related events, including multiple deaths, permanent loss of function, and prolonged hospital stays due to health care worker’s decreased response times to alarms (Horkan, 2014; Joint Commission, 2013). The Joint Commission reinstated a National Patient Safety Goal in 2013 and had requirements for all hospitals that had to be met by July 1, 2014 (Joint Commission, 2013). These goals included being able to make alarm safety a priority and develop a plan to decrease the amount of alarms. This plan could include preventing unnecessary patient monitoring, clarifying who is allowed to monitor and silence alarms, setting the cardiac monitors to have multiple tones, and having a brief delay in the alarm to see if the patient can self-resolve. The second phase of the Joint Commission’s plan was to be implemented by January 2016, to where the hospital must have followed through with their designated plan (Joint Commission, 2013).

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

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.

Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning

Stressful work environments, long work hours and inadequate sleep all contribute to an increase in physical and mental exhaustion amongst nurses. Typically, people choose nursing as a career to help others and to make a difference in their lives, without realizing the number of duties this career demands. Nurses may suffer in silence when they are experiencing stress. The effects can impact safe and reliable care by decreasing job satisfaction, decreasing productivity, causing poor personal health, and compromising patient care. Many facilities would benefit from implementing evidence-based strategies to address nurse fatigue and burnout.

The risks of making an error were significantly increased when work shifts were longer than twelve hours, when nurses worked overtime, or when they worked more than forty hours per week. (Trossman, 2009). Working longer hours in a high stress area will always increase the error rate. Designating an adequate number of RN positions to ensure nurses work an appropriate schedule without overtime and that their workload allows for breaks. Managerial staff must work to develop specific policies about the length of work times based on the setting, patient and provider needs. Those policies should limit nurses from working more than 12.5 consecutive hours. Provide education for all care providers on the hazards and causes of fatigue. Continue to document unsafe staffing conditions and work with others to change the current work culture so that it recognizes the effects of fatigue on patient safety, as well as the nurse. (Berger, et al. 2006)