Battling Alarm Fatigue in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Heather Herrera; Danielle Wood

doi:10.1016/j.cnc.2023.05.003

Battling Alarm Fatigue in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am. 2023 Sep;35(3):347-355. doi: 10.1016/j.cnc.2023.05.003. Epub 2023 Jun 11.

Authors

Heather Herrera¹, Danielle Wood²

Affiliations

¹ Christus Children's, 333 North, Santa Rosa Street, San Antonio, TX 78207, USA.
² Duke University Hospital, 104 Lanier Valley Drive, Durham, NC 27703, USA. Electronic address: Danielle.wood@duke.edu.

PMID: 37532388
DOI: 10.1016/j.cnc.2023.05.003

Abstract

Pediatric intensive care unit nurses can be exposed to hundreds of alarms per patient they care for each shift. The exposure to so many alarms can cause nurses to be desensitized to future alarms and thus increase the time to respond to alarms. This is one of the largest patient safety concerns within health care today. Steps should be taken to mitigate the number of alarms nurses experience so that they can properly respond to actionable alarms.

Keywords: Actionable alarms; Alarm fatigue; Alarm parameters; Desensitization; PICU.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Child
Clinical Alarms*
Humans
Intensive Care Units
Intensive Care Units, Pediatric
Monitoring, Physiologic
Patient Safety