Alarm Safety And Alarm Fatigue

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Factors Contributing To Alarm Fatigue

As noted previously, alarm fatigue is a phenomenon that occurs as clinicians become desensitized to alarms due to their frequency and variety, resulting in decreased alertness and lower confidence in the accuracy and urgency of alarms. The primary factor contributing to alarm fatigue is the frequency of alarms generated in a patient care unit. Several studies have demonstrated that the audible alarm burden is substantial and concerning.,,, Researchers have identified that the false-alarm or provider-induced burden can be as high as 95%. The audible burden can lead to a decreased alertness of health care professionals and alarm fatigue.

Over time, health care professionals who are exposed to significant volume and frequency of alarms may subconsciously ignore the sounds. Prior research has discovered that people rapidly learn to ignore frequent noises. Therefore, frequent alarms, both actionable and nonactionable, contribute to the large number of alarms generated and may eventually be ignored. Some facilities may also institute a secondary alarm notification to ensure that alarms are not missed. Although well intended, this doubles the number of alerts generated for a single patient event, adding to the audible alert burden and perhaps hastening the learned behavior and alarm fatigue.

Recommendations For Future Research

This review illustrates the paucity of published research that pertains to mechanical ventilation alarms. As stated earlier, several variables may impact the lack of literature, including the lack of standardization and sensitivity of both acute care and long-term mechanical ventilator alarms. To assure evidence-based practices pertaining to mechanical ventilation alarm practices, it is imperative that research be done to inform those practices.

Recommendations:

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Unintended Outcomes Of Alarms

The large number of alarms, especially of false alarms, has led to several unintended outcomes. Some consequences are disruption in patient care, desensitization to alarms,anxiety in hospital staff and patients,sleep deprivation and depressed immune systems, misuse of monitor equipment including “work-arounds” such as turning down alarm volumes or adjusting device settings, and missed critical events. Some additional outcomes include workload increase, interference with communication, wasted time, patient dissatisfaction, and unnecessary investigations, referrals, or treatments.

What Is Alarm Fatigue For Nurses

In healthcare, we talk about the dangers of alarm fatigue and its consequences: It presents a threat to patients when an alarm is overlooked, and unrelenting alarms and alerts exact a toll on clinicians.

Not unlike the boy who cried wolf, as Nadine Salmon wrote on rn.com, the constant drone of beeps and buzzes, not to mention false alarms in between, can leave todays healthcare provider desensitized and in danger of missing the next alarm.

Shes right. Ive been there.

All clinicians struggle with alarm fatigue, but in this article, I address it from a nurses perspective. I’ve worked with alarms and alerts within acute settings as a caregiverand as part of a team that comes in to provide solutions to reduce the number of alarms and alerts directed at clinicians.

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Table : Xiao And Seagulls Taxonomy Of Alarms: 5

Actionable alarms indicate a physiologically abnormal state, which requires that the anesthesia professional intervene in order to avoid patient harm.

A mild deviation might require only assessment of the patient and heightened alertness for further change, while others might indicate an urgent, life-threatening problem.6 Nonactionable alarms can be caused by monitoring artifact , or a true deviation from the alarm limits that represents a clinically insignificant abnormality .

Sentinel Event Alert : Medical Device Alarm Safety In Hospitals

Many medical devices have alarm systems. These alarm-equipped devices are essential to providing safe care to patients in many health care settings clinicians depend on these devices for information they need to deliver appropriate care and to guide treatment decisions. However, these devices present a multitude of challenges and opportunities for health care organizations when their alarms create similar sounds, when their default settings are not changed, and when there is a failure to respond to their alarm signals.

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A Few Scary Facts About Hospital Alarms

Alarm fatigue is one of the most troubling and highly researched issues in nursing. Over the last decade, research has found the following staggering statistics related to alarm fatigue and false alarms:

• The Food and Drug Administration reported more than 560 alarm-related deaths in the United States between 2005 and 2008.
• Between January 2009 and June 2012, hospitals in the United States reported 80 deaths and 13 severe injuries.
• One study showed that more than 85 percent of all alarms in a particular unit were false.
• A hospital reported an average of one million alarms going off in a single week.
• A childrens hospital reported 5,300 alarms in a day 95% of them false.
• A hospital reported at least 350 alarms per patient per day in the intensive care unit.

Improve Visualization Of Alarms

The first step to reducing alarm fatigue is to invest in remote displays and speakers that offer more ways to visualize the devices that are alarming. While traditionally there is only a display at the central nurses station, with the layout of wards such as the Med/Surg Unit, having displays positioned in several different areas allow clinicians to visualize alarms efficiently while reducing time away from the patient.

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Ecris Top Ten Technology Hazards For 2018

Recently, ECRI Institute released its Top Ten Technology Hazards for 2018. The purpose behind ECRIs yearly list is to promote the safer use of technology:

The safe use of health technologyfrom beds and stretchers to large, complex imaging systemsrequires identifying possible sources of danger or difficulty with those technologies and taking steps to minimize the likelihood that adverse events will occur. This list will help healthcare facilities do that.

Number 4 on this list deals with how Missed Alarms May Result from Inappropriately Configured Secondary Notification Devices and Systems:

Issues With Audible Alarms

Mechanical ventilators, similar to other medical equipment and monitors, are furnished with audible and visual alert features. When both the audible and visual options are available, these alerts often occur together: a specific tone will sound while a flashing light will initiate on the machine. Depending on the level of the alert , the mechanical ventilator may emit varying tones. The intent of the audible tones is to provide the clinician with an indicator that draws their attention to the flashing lights and the patient’s condition. While the addition of an audible alert can be an effective way to alert the clinician to a change in status or adverse patient reaction, audible alerts have been identified as major sources of noise in the ICU. Frequent noise from these audible alerts may contribute to the issue of overall alarm fatigue.

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Technological Advances In Patient Monitors

In general, clinical monitoring is based on a careful balance between sensitivity and specificity of alarm signal recognition, as well as the associated threshold setting required to trigger alert condition . Increasing monitor sensitivity helps ensure that truly significant events are not missed, primarily using single-parameter alarms and default thresholds . However, as a trade-off this increases the incidence of nuisance alarms that are nonactionable. This issue may be remedied by the development of smart alarm systems that use algorithmic approaches to evaluate multiple parameters prior to determining whether the detected change is truly critical, and only then sending an alert to the operator . This improvement in device specificity would result in significantly fewer false alarms and therefore reduce AF. At the same time, the challenges of unpredictable code and interrupted or corrupt data have been noted and may represent an important safety issue due to the potential for missing data or data misinterpretation, especially when using memory-intensive applications on devices that are continually operating for prolonged periods of time .

Why Is This A Problem

As the proliferation of technology in health care settings continues, so does the number of alarms related to these devices. Audible mechanical ventilator alarms such as high breathing frequency or high peak pressures can occur with relative frequency and short duration for patients who are more awake and mobile in the critical care setting. Staff exposure to large numbers of mechanical ventilator alarms, which may self-correct and are nonactionable, may result in a longer response time the next time the ventilator alarm sounds.

Few studies have been published that measure both the quantity and categorization of ventilator alarms in relation to physiologic alarms. In 1999, Chambrin et al evaluated the number of types of alarms triggered per hour in 5 different ICUs . The investigators reported that 37.8% of all alarms were generated by mechanical ventilators. A 2009 study that spanned 4 months and recorded 34,827 alarms noted that 42.2% of alarms in a cardiac ICU were attributable to mechanical ventilation. Lawless identified that 31% of all alarms in a pediatric ICU during a 7-d observation originated with the mechanical ventilator. Joshi et al studied the responsiveness of nurses to physiologic alarms in the neonatal ICU and identified that mechanical ventilator alarms comprised 11.7% of the 6,000 alarms recorded on video over 2,400 h.

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National Patient Safety Goals

Reducing the harm associated with clinical alarm systems continues to be a national patient safety goal. The Joint Commission continues to encourage healthcare systems to put policies in place to decrease the burden of unnecessary alarms on staff. The Joint Commission issues the following safety guidelines for all hospitals in their annual report:

• Leaders establish alarm system safety as a hospital priority
• Identify the most important alarm signals to manage based on the following
• Input from the medical staff and clinical departments
• Risk to patients if the alarm signal is not attended to or if it malfunctions

What Is Alarm Fatigue

Alarm fatigue is the exhaustion, frustration, and anxiety that can result from an abundance of hospital alarms. Because there are so many alarms with different meanings, they can overwhelm the medical staff. The constant barrage of noises can lead to sensory numbness, and sometimes important alarms can slip through the cracks as a consequence.

The issue can involve both alarm frequency and accuracy. Although alarms alert nurses and other medical professionals to crucial information about patients health and equipment function, the frequent occurrence of false alarms that do not in fact indicate a clinically significant event can lead people to ignore them. This kind of alarm fatigue compromises patient safety.

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The Case For Continuous Surveillance Monitoring And Real

In this article which was published in Healthcare Business Today, Michael Wong, JD makes the case for continuous surveillance monitoring and real-time analytics.

The successful implementation of continuous surveillance monitoring may have substantial patient benefits. Unfortunately, analyzing notifications from individual medical devices, reliance on physical spot checks of patients, and the lack of rules-based advanced analytics to assess a patients current condition in real-time or to identify signs of deterioration is a goal that many hospitals and health systems still have not attained.

Issues With Setting Alarm Limits

Mechanical ventilator technology has advanced, introducing new setting options associated with added visual alerts and audible alarms. Mechanical ventilators can monitor for changes in airway pressure, volume, and breathing frequency. Many variables affect these monitored parameters, such as changes in patient lung mechanics, patientventilator synchrony, and level of sedation or analgesia. Alarms generated by these parameters may require an audible alarm and immediate intervention, such as a ventilator circuit disconnect alarm. On the other hand, many alarms may not require immediate clinical intervention, such as high breathing frequency or high pressure, and these conditions may self-correct. For these types of alarms, an alert message and trending over time may be sufficient for monitoring purposes rather than an audible alarm. Clinicians may have difficulty making decisions about how to place delays for alarms, widen parameter settings, or disable parameters due to a lack of evidence-based best practices specific to for mechanical ventilator alarms.

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Solutions: Simple And Complex

Alarm fatigue is a complex problem, and potential solutions include redesigning organizational aspects of unit environment and layout, workflow and process, and safety culture. Technical and engineering solutions, workload considerations, and practical changes to the ways in which existing technology is used can mitigate the effects of alarm fatigue. These changes will ultimately require new approaches to training, clinical workflow, and organizational policies.11 The overarching goals for a comprehensive solution to alarm fatigue should be to clearly and accurately indicate potential hazards while minimizing false or nuisance alarms. Signals should be consistent across all equipment used in the health care environment. Multiple factors, including noise, lighting, competing task demands, distrust, and inattentional blindness or deafness can prevent a health care provider from detecting or responding to an alarm. New equipment should incorporate designs that decrease a clinicians workload and do not unnecessarily distract him or her from other time-critical tasks. Both increasing workload and high levels of ambient noise can impair subjects ability to localize alarms.13

Ways To Reduce Alarm Fatigue In Hospitals

The sheer volume of alarms in the typical hospital room causes alarm fatigue: Clinicians experience sensory overload from the excessive number of alarms and become desensitized, which can lead to longer response times or critical alarms being missed altogether.

Alarm fatigue isnt something that only large health systems experience. If you work in a hospital of any size, chances are high that you are exposed to the sounds of alarms beeping and buzzing all day long. Modern hospitals foster a highly computerized clinical environment, resulting in nearly everything being hooked to a monitor that can make audible noisesfalsely or otherwise. More than 19 in 20 hospitals are concerned with alarm fatigue and the potentially detrimental effect it can have on patient safety.

The alarm fatigue epidemic needs to be resolved in order to increase patient safety and decrease sentinel events related to poor alarm management. Here are eight ways to help diminish the din of alarms throughout your hospital, improve patient safety, and boost clinician satisfaction:

1. Clean and Monitor the Equipment

2. Decrease Clinically Inconsequential Alerts

3. Funnel Alerts to the Right People

4. Triage Alerts with Software

5. Get Rid of the Noise

6. Tailor Alerts to Patient Characteristics

7. Invest in Advanced Clinical Alerting

8. Stop False Alarms

Start to Combat Alarm Fatigue Today

Topic: Alarm fatigue

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Alarm Fatigue Prevention Tips

Nurses and healthcare leaders can help prevent, avoid, and mitigate alarm fatigue in a variety of ways, such as:

• Optimizing nurse schedules so alerts dont fall on one person
• Educating staff on protocols for monitoring systems and managing alarm settings
• Evaluating where and when alarms are clinically significant or superfluous
• Consistently gathering nurse feedback about burnout and alarm fatigue
• Customizing alarms based on each patients condition and healthcare needs
• Designating actionable responses for each type of alert so nurses know how to respond
• Consolidating or disabling redundant alarms
• Properly preparing patients for the placement of device hookups and monitoring protocols
• Categorizing alarms based on priority levels
• Analyzing alarm data to pinpoint and predict when issues arise
• Reducing alarm decibel levels or experimenting with different sound types
• Regularly maintaining and updating equipment, including changing or charging batteries and installing new software

Establish Alarm System Safety As A Hospital Priority

The first step to reducing harm from the alarm system is to prioritize its efficiency in the hospital.

• Ensure all of the hospitals medical staff are aware of alarm system updates and changes.
• Allow for communication between employees about what they believe might improve the alarm system.
• Communicate with patients the expectations surrounding the alarm system, such as what might cause it to go off, and how long it will take for staff to arrive.

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