• Kathleen Rice Simpson and Audrey Lyndon.
• Mercy Hospital St Louis, Missouri (Dr Simpson); and Department of Family Health Care Nursing, UCSF School of Nursing, San Francisco, California (Dr Lyndon).
• J Nurs Care Qual. 2019 Jan 1; 34 (1): 66-72.

BackgroundNurses can be exposed to hundreds of alarms during their shift, contributing to alarm fatigue.PurposeThe purposes were to explore similarities and differences in perceptions of clinical alarms by labor nurses caring for generally healthy women compared with perceptions of adult intensive care unit (ICU) and neonatal ICU nurses caring for critically ill patients and to seek nurses' suggestions for potential improvements.MethodsNurses were asked via focus groups about the utility of clinical alarms from medical devices.ResultsThere was consensus that false alarms and too many devices generating alarms contributed to alarm fatigue, and most alarms lacked clinical relevance. Nurses identified certain types of alarms that they responded to immediately, but the vast majority of the alarms did not contribute to their clinical assessment or planned nursing care.ConclusionsMonitoring only those patients who need it and only those physiologic values that are warranted, based on patient condition, may decrease alarm burden.

15 keywords...

hide…