Do Scottish Coronary Care Unit nurses have negative perceptions towards monitor alarms and therefore showing signs of becoming alarm fatigued?

Abstract

Background Alarm fatigue occurs when healthcare staff are exposed to a large number of monitor alarms causing them to become desensitised and increasing their reaction time to the monitor alarms (Horkan, 2014). This therefore has a negative affect on the safety of the patients. Alarm fatigue stems from the fact that 85-95% of monitor alarms do not need clinical intervention or are not truly representative of a change in a patient's condition (The Joint Commission, 2013). Nursing staff therefore begin to lose trust in the monitoring systems and do not respond to the monitor alarm appropriately. Some nursing staff have admitted using dangerous interventions in a bid to try reduce the number of alarms such as lowering alarm volumes, setting alarm limits outside appropriate ranges and disabling alarms (Korniewicz et al, 2008). These interventions can have devastating consequences for the patient, with 80 patients dying due to an alarm related incident in America between 2009 and 2012 (The Joint Commission, 2013). Aims From reviewing the literature it has been established that there have been no studies carried out on alarm fatigue in Scotland on Coronary Care Unit (CCU) nurses. Therefore, the study's aim is to establish whether Scottish CCU nurses have negative perceptions towards monitor alarms and therefore, showing signs of becoming alarm fatigued. The study will also establish whether Scottish CCU nurses have an understanding of the term alarm fatigue. Method A quantitative descriptive survey design will be used to achieve the research aims. A multi-stage cluster sampling approach will be used to create the sample. The sample will be made up of Scottish CCU nurses with more than six months of experience working in a CCU. A self-administered online questionnaire will be used as the data collection tool. The data collected on the perceptions Scottish CCU nurses have towards monitor would assess whether nurses are showing signs of becoming alarm fatigued. The data will be analysed using descriptive statistics including percentages displayed in pie charts.