Reply to this integrating a scholarly article.
The goal of every nurse is patient safety and while technology can promote safety, it cannot guarantee it (Chamberlain University, 2021). While working on the med-surg unit in the beginning of my career, I learned about alarm fatigue. I was fresh out of school and was eager to chase every IV pump that was alarming. I noticed that my coworkers remained seated long after each pump began to beep. Finally, I asked why no one was in a hurry to check the pumps that were beeping, one nurse told me “They never stop beeping, soon you will hear it beep in your sleep”. She was right, I heard pumps beeping when there were no pumps or patients around. As convenient and safe as they seem, IV pumps have become so sensitive with their alarms that they beep at the slightest bend of an arm. IV occlusion was the most common issue we came across with these pumps. Typically, it was due to the patient bending their arm the wrong way and sometimes we couldn’t find a reason at all. The pumps constantly alarming have created a different safety issue now that nurses are getting alarm fatigue.
In the emergency room, the telemetry monitoring unit was the source of our alarm fatigue. Every time a patient changed positions, breathed heavy or laughed, the alarm would sound. The alarm had different settings that allowed us to adjust the limits but usually we were slammed and didn’t adjust them. The first alarm that would sound is the one we heard the most and the one that we paid the least attention to. The second alarm which was a rapid, continuous beep would usually get our attention. This one would sound during an episode of supraventricular tachycardia, asystole, or ventricular fibrillation and we always took notice. Alarm fatigue is not isolated to my facility. In fact, between January 2005 and June 2010, 566 alarm-related deaths were reported in a Food and Drug Administration database (Turmell, Coke, Catinella, Hosford, & Majeski, 2017). I’m not aware of any alarm fatigue incidents that caused death at my facility, but it could happen at any time. There are too many distractions on every unit, whether it be a company cell phone, telemetry monitors or IV pumps alarming. We must continue our efforts of quality improvement and find a way to make the technology safer and user friendly.
Chamberlain University. (2021, August). Week 6 lesson: Summary. Retrieved from Chamberlain University: https://chamberlain.instructure.com/courses/85274/…
Turmell, J., Coke, L., Catinella, R., Hosford, T., & Majeski, A. (2017). Alarm fatigue: Use of an evidence-based alarm management strategy. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 37(2), 125.
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