Alarm Fatigue: A Concept Analysis
Alarm Fatigue in Health Care: A Concept Analysis
Chamberlain College of Nursing
NR-501: Theoretical Basis for Advanced Nursing Practice
Alarm Fatigue in Health Care: A Concept Analysis
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 off of literature review, along with the use of model and contradictory cases to emphasize the data discovered in the review stage. Key words utilized during the search include alarm, fatigue, alarm fatigue, nursing, interruptions, & distractions. Throughout the hospital environment, there are many different noises and sounds to be heard. Many of those sounds heard by nurses, as well as patients and their families are coming from different machines, monitors and even patients. As the quality and number of monitors and special equipment continue to increase, so do the number of patients that are connected to them. This in turn exposes not only patients, but also nurses to a significant amount of noise and alarms, ultimately leading to the clinical problem called alarm fatigue. As defined by the Joint Commission, alarm fatigue is known as the desensitization of medical staff as a result of sensory overload. This overload ultimately results in a delay of an alarm being answered, and sometimes someone completely missing the alarm altogether (The Joint Commission, 2015). Alarm fatigue has been recognized as a contributing factor to clinical distractions, interfering with patient care. This end result is a decrease in patient
Chamberlain College of Nursing
NR-501: Theoretical Basis for Advanced Nursing Practice
Alarm Fatigue in Health Care: A Concept Analysis
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 off of literature review, along with the use of model and contradictory cases to emphasize the data discovered in the review stage. Key words utilized during the search include alarm, fatigue, alarm fatigue, nursing, interruptions, & distractions. Throughout the hospital environment, there are many different noises and sounds to be heard. Many of those sounds heard by nurses, as well as patients and their families are coming from different machines, monitors and even patients. As the quality and number of monitors and special equipment continue to increase, so do the number of patients that are connected to them. This in turn exposes not only patients, but also nurses to a significant amount of noise and alarms, ultimately leading to the clinical problem called alarm fatigue. As defined by the Joint Commission, alarm fatigue is known as the desensitization of medical staff as a result of sensory overload. This overload ultimately results in a delay of an alarm being answered, and sometimes someone completely missing the alarm altogether (The Joint Commission, 2015). Alarm fatigue has been recognized as a contributing factor to clinical distractions, interfering with patient care. This end result is a decrease in patient
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