COMPETENCY POWERPOINT

Nurses fatigue alarm management

Introduction Alarm fatigue can have adverse consequences to patient’s health and safety Nurses have to balance between caregiving and responding to numerous alarms, including non-actionable alarms Nurses in intensive care units (ICU) spend 35% of their working time monitoring and responding to alarms (López et al., 2022). The burden of responding to numerous irrelevant or false alarms leads to errors, alarm apathy, burnout and stress among nurses  Prevalence of alarm fatigue can lead to complacency and alarm-related adverse events

Introduction Cont’d  Alarm fatigue is a systematic medical issue and requires human, organizational and technical interventions Implementing new policies and strategies to improve alarm fatigue can increase alarm response and enhance patient care Many clinical facilities still lack practical and concrete strategies to address alarm-related issues  There is still a knowledge gap between alarm-related standards and how the standards translate to practice.

Research Methodology  Qualitative study – descriptive phenomenological approach of Giorgi Purposeful sampling  Involved 17 nurses working in ICU Semi-structured interviews for data collection Data analysis – Giorgi’s phenomenological method Atlas.ti version 8.0 program for data analysis

Research Findings Nurses considered monitors to be utility devices and add extra work All participants agreed that alarm and electronic devices were basic unit requirements  Monitors have increasingly become complex and frequently cause problems such as stress There is continuous, stressful and annoying background noise from alarms in facility settings  Teamwork among nurses was essential in responding to alarms  There is need for advanced knowledge and specialized training in monitor surveillance (López et al., 2022).

InterventionsTraining in the configuration of monitors and new improvementsCustomization of alarms to the patient’s conditions Teamwork in responding to alarmsImplementing modern technologies like clinical decision support systems (CDSS)Providing systems with automated feedback and learning mechanisms (López et al., 2022).

ReferenceLópez, E. F., Rodríguez, M. B., Lavado García, J., Toribio, F. R., Amarilla, D. F. J., Rodríguez Almagro, J. J., Ribeiro, A. S. F., Fernandes, V. S., & Moran, G. J. M. (2022). Experiences and mediating factors in nurses’ responses to electronic device alarms: A phenomenological study. Journal of Nursing Management (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 30(5), 1303–1316. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13614