Alarm Fatigue

For those of you who don’t know what alarm fatigue is, think of a car alarm. The first time you hear it going off, you run to your window to see who’s breaking into a car. Maybe you run to the window the second time and the third time, too. By the tenth time the alarm goes off, you’re thinking that the alarm is broken and someone needs to get that fixed. After about thirty false alarms, you’re feeling like going out there and busting up the car yourself – especially if the car alarm wakes you when you’re asleep. So alarms can be good, but if there are too many “false positives” – in other words if they go off too much when nothing is wrong – people tend to become tired of listening to them and eventually ignore the alarms.  On the other hand, if there are too many “false negatives” – meaning that they don’t go off when something is wrong – then the alarms aren’t fulfilling their purpose. The same problem holds true for multiple types of alarms. Think about virus alerts on your computer. If they are set to alert you about everything, the first few times you freak out, then, after investigating, you dismiss them. If they alerts keep occurring too often, eventually you figure out a way to disable them. If the alarms don’t alert you when a virus is trying to hack into your computer … then what good is it to have the software? With electronic medical records, medical provid...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Policy Source Type: blogs