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A proven safety risk
Alarm fatigue

Patients and alarms

Patients and alarms

More than just a nuisance


The proliferation of alarms generated by monitoring systems is a growing concern for anyone committed to patient safety. Exposure to excess alarms in care settings, especially non-actionable alarms, can result in desensitisation among the clinicians that they are intended to alert, a syndrome called alarm fatigue.

Alarm fatigue can lead to reflexive silencing of alarms, breaking monitoring protocols and missing true positive alarms—placing a burden on caregivers and jeopardising their ability to care for patients.
When an alarm goes off you want to make sure it is clinically relevant.”

Ineke van de Pol

ICU nurse practitioner, St. Antonius Hospital, The Netherlands

An insider’s view of
alarm overload

For short-staffed nurses, false alarms are more than annoyances. Most nurses say they are affected by alarm fatigue, 1 which can cause stress, depression, reduced productivity and burnout. This video attempts to illustrate what it’s like to care for a patient in today’s alarm-filled environment.
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A quick survey

Taking alarm management from concept to reality

 

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Excessive false alerts
impact a hospital on many levels

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Clinical

Missing actionable alarms jeopardises patient safety.
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Financial

Patient harm as a result of over-alarming can have costly repercussions from transfers to the ICU, extended length of stay and litigation.
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Technical

The lack of alarm customisation for individual patients can create excessive nuisance alarms.
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Operational

About 10% of nursing time is lost responding to non-actionable alarms.
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Growth

 

A stressful, noise-filled work environment can contribute to staff burnout.

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Regulatory

Non-compliance can be costly, as health care moves from volume to value-based care models.

5 key facts about alarm fatigue


When you consider that patients, staff and families may be exposed to up to 700 alarms a day, 2 it’s no surprise that alarm fatigue is a serious problem. Yet few hospitals have comprehensive programs to manage “alarm pollution” and there is no clear evidence-based practice because no two patients or units are exactly the same. Understanding the scope of the problem is an important first step. Start by educating yourself and your colleagues with these facts from recent research.

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Alarm management 101

Alarms are a good thing… aren’t they? Raise your team’s awareness about alarm fatigue with this module from a Philips alarm management consultant.

This downloadable and video drills down into the root causes and impact of the problem and shares research on how it is currently perceived.
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Alarm management:
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Philips is
here to help

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The price for patients

Find out why you should protect your patients

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What drives alarm fatigue?

Discover new facts and approaches for making effective change

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Success stories, exclusive case studies and proven solutions

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Footnotes:

 

[1] Juniper Consulting. Junicon Web Survey, 2012.

[2] Cvach, M., "Monitor Alarm Fatigue: An Integrative Review", Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, July/August 2012, pp. 268-277.

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By clicking on the link, you will be leaving the official Royal Philips Healthcare ("Philips") website. Any links to third-party websites that may appear on this site are provided only for your convenience and in no way represent any affiliation or endorsement of the information provided on those linked websites. Philips makes no representations or warranties of any kind with regard to any third-party websites or the information contained therein.

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