In a hospital setting, there are a plethora of noises being simultaneously heard by nurses. Although biomedical alarms measuring pulse oximetry readings, heart rate, blood pressure and EKG rhythms are the main culprits of alarms-there are also patient call bells, bed alarms, IV Pump signals, ventilator alarms, etc. Hearing such repetitive sounds for long periods of time leads professionals to become desensitized, decreasing alertness and confidence in the seriousness to respond to these alarms resulting in what is now coined “alarm fatigue” (Bridi, Thiago, Lyra de Silva, 2013). Leading the list of patient safety initiatives, Joint Commission has deemed alarm fatigue a safety concern and a top priority in healthcare settings. In January 2014, …show more content…
Kumar (2014) discovered success at the Boston Medical Center with findings suggesting the change in monitoring parameters to more appropriate settings for each patient could drastically reduce alarm frequencies. An estimated 89% of alarms were from poor data leading nurses to ignore warning alarms. The study reduced alarms from 1 million to 400,000 per week and increased the percentage of nurses who considered the noise level acceptable, from 0% to 64%. Similar results were revealed in a study conducted by Graham and Cvach (2010) showing a 43% reduction in critical alarms, an increase in compliance of nurses appropriately altering the settings per patient and nurses ranked overall noise levels less than before the implemented changes. Providing further evidence in support of patient specific monitoring settings as an affective method to decrease alarm fatigue, Cvach et al (2015) notes 1,710 alarms over 163 hours of monitoring with standard CCU settings compared to 1,165 in the altered CCU settings group. Over a study period of ten days, 22 patients were joined into the study. Researchers noticed less medium and low-priority alarms but more high priority alarms on the unit with altered settings. All findings of this study were supported with a p value of less than 0.001 indicating altered patient monitor settings had a significant effect on alarm frequency, which in turn may decrease alarm fatigue. Minimizing low priority alarms increases the chance of a nurse responding to high priority alarms with urgency. In association with this assumption, Cvach et al (2013) determined a reduction in medium and low-priority alarms and a 40% decrease in the average amount of alarms per bed, per day by performing daily electrode changes as opposed to the hospital recommendation of every 72