Reducing Alarm Fatigue

When walking the halls of a critical care unit on any given day, one will hear a multitude of alarms indicating various issues with equipment or patients. Nurses often become desensitized to these alarms resulting in a failure to respond in a timely manner. This is called alarm fatigue, and it has become a popular topic among many healthcare organizations. Between January 2005 and June 2010, there were 566 reports of alarm-related patient deaths received by the Food and Drug Administration (Joint Commission, 2013). The purpose of this project is to identify the current best practices to reduce the number of alarms in these units and combat alarm fatigue among nurses. A total of ten research articles were analyzed and summarized for inclusion in this project. Practices for reducing the number of alarms include customizing the alarm settings and thresholds, adding alarm delays, changing telemetry monitor electrodes daily after meticulous skin preparation, and implementing secondary notification systems to alert the appropriate staff members to the alarm