Effective approaches to control non-actionable alarms and alarm fatigue

Alarm fatigue is a problem, well-recognized by clinicians, where exposure to high rates of clinical alarms, especially non-actionable ones, results in desensitization leading to dismissal of or slowed responses to the alarms. The risk to patients is poorly understood but may be substantial when the alarms that are true are ignored or the response is delayed. The effect on patients' families and the patients themselves is even more unclear but frequent alarms likely create psychological and physiological stress that may affect patient outcomes.

Source: Journal of Electrocardiology - July 16, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Bradford D. Winters Source Type: research