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Alarm Fatigue and Other Distractors

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Alarm Fatigue and Other Distractors

Clinical alarms are essential in enhancing patient safety via an alert to a clinician to take a deviation from a predetermined normal situation. Alarms have been used to alarm physicians in cases where a patient’s condition is worsening or when a device has a malfunction. Device malfunction can be in the form of a loose connection, or medication has run out. However, alarms have been associated with alarm fatigue (Gaines, 2020). Alarm fatigue is defined as a sensory overload emanating in cases when clinicians experience exceeding the number of alarms leading to desensitization to alarm sounds as well as an increased number of signals. Alarm fatigue can compromise the patient’s safety in cases where alarms are ignored, and the patient needs immediate attention. For instance, the patient’s alarm might sound until its battery dies and hence compromising the patient’s safety.

Sentimental events that can be bound to legal and ethical issues regarding alarms include disgraceful alert settings, cautions that were to guide to medical staff, inactivated warns, and deficient cautions frameworks (White, 2020). However, nurses are not laid eligible during sentinel events that can lead to patient injury, silenced alarm, or ignored the alarm.

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In a normal day setting, numerous alarms sound, leading to fatigue. Also, many erroneous alarms sound without necessarily indicating an emergency. Also, there are many alarms in a hospital setting that are for clinicians, while others are not making it a possible reason to ignore signals (Gains, 2020). It could be thought to reduce clinically inconsequential alarms, which might not only reduce nurse’s responsiveness but curb noise in a hospital setting.

In a bid to minimize problems associated with alarm fatigue, the Joint Commission for patient safety initiated new guidelines for clinical alarms. The new guidelines were subject to be adhered to by all hospitals so as to meet performance standards integrated within the national patient safety goals initiative. In line with the newly developed guidelines, all hospitals have to come up with specific policies aligned with the 2016 procedures (White, 2020). The Joint Commission national patient safety Goals for 2016 regarding alarms include appropriate settings for alarm, when alerts can be disabled, and when parameters need shifts.

Regarding the 2016 updated guidelines, workers should not turn off an alarm or change parameters as it is against the Joint Commission updates. In such cases, the fellow must be reported since it is a violation of the rules. Also, hospitals are required to identify essential alarm signals by figuring out patients at risk (White, 2020). In any case, if a staff fails to respond to an alarm right away or an alarm has a malfunction, then the clinical team has to make an input. Also, hospitals are required to provide training to all staff on proper management of alarm, which might be challenged in their usage.

Alarms that are ignored affect patient’s health negatively as well as their families since the patient miss’s medication and ultimate care. According to Mazer (2015), unnecessary noise in healthcare systems has been created by operations and nurses themselves. Many patient’s and families’ experience in hospitals is worse of sound systems. Patients also complain more about noise than any other thing in the hospital setting. Mazer (2015) offers steps in reducing noise in hospitals via forming a sound quality committee, assessing the sound environment, establishing sound standards, equipment maintenance, educate staff, and act as a patient advocate.

 

 

 

References

Gaines, K. (2020). Alarm Fatigue is Way Too Real (and Scary) For Nurses. Retrieved 17 February 2020, from https://nurse.org/articles/alarm-fatigue-statistics-patient-safety/

Mazer, S. E. (2015). Nursing, noise, and norms: Why Nightingale is still right. Healing Healthcare Systems.

White, J. (2020). New for 2016: Joint Commission updates alarm guidelines. Healthcarebusinesstech.com. Retrieved 17 February 2020, from http://www.healthcarebusinesstech.com/alarms-2016/.

 

 

 

 

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