Interdisciplinary collaboration in critical care alarm research: A bibliometric analysis

Louis Agha-Mir-Salim; Lucas McCullum; Enrico Dähnert; Yanick-Daniel Scheel; Ainsley Wilson; Marianne Carpio; Carmen Chan; Claudia Lo; Lindsay Maher; Corinna Dressler; Felix Balzer; Leo Anthony Celi; Akira-Sebastian Poncette; Michele M Pelter

doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2023.105285

Interdisciplinary collaboration in critical care alarm research: A bibliometric analysis

Int J Med Inform. 2024 Jan:181:105285. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2023.105285. Epub 2023 Nov 7.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Medical Informatics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: louis.agha-mir-salim@charite.de.
² Department of Imaging Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
³ Hospital Management, Nursing Directorate, Practice Development and Nursing Science, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁴ Department of Nursing, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ Medical Intensive Care Unit, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
⁶ School of Nursing and Health Professions, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁷ School of Nursing and Health Professions, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Department of Business Analytics and Information Systems, School of Management, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁸ Medical Library, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁹ Institute of Medical Informatics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
¹⁰ Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
¹¹ Institute of Medical Informatics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
¹² Department of Physiological Nursing, University of California San Francisco School of Nursing, San Francisco, CA, USA.

PMID: 37977055
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2023.105285

Abstract

Background: Alarm fatigue in nurses is a major patient safety concern in the intensive care unit. This is caused by exposure to high rates of false and non-actionable alarms. Despite decades of research, the problem persists, leading to stress, burnout, and patient harm resulting from true missed events. While engineering approaches to reduce false alarms have spurred hope, they appear to lack collaboration between nurses and engineers to produce real-world solutions. The aim of this bibliometric analysis was to examine the relevant literature to quantify the level of authorial collaboration between nurses, physicians, and engineers.

Methods: We conducted a bibliometric analysis of articles on alarm fatigue and false alarm reduction strategies in critical care published between 2010 and 2022. Data were extracted at the article and author level. The percentages of author disciplines per publication were calculated by study design, journal subject area, and other article-level factors.

Results: A total of 155 articles with 583 unique authors were identified. While 31.73 % (n = 185) of the unique authors had a nursing background, publications using an engineering study design (n = 46), e.g., model development, had a very low involvement of nursing authors (mean proportion at 1.09 %). Observational studies (n = 58) and interventional studies (n = 33) had a higher mean involvement of 52.27 % and 47.75 %, respectively. Articles published in nursing journals (n = 32) had the highest mean proportion of nursing authors (80.32 %), while those published in engineering journals (n = 46) had the lowest (9.00 %), with 6 (13.04 %) articles having one or more nurses as co-authors.

Conclusion: Minimal involvement of nursing expertise in alarm research utilizing engineering methodologies may be one reason for the lack of successful, real-world solutions to ameliorate alarm fatigue. Fostering a collaborative, interdisciplinary research culture can promote a common publication culture across fields and may yield sustainable implementation of technological solutions in healthcare.

Keywords: Alarm fatigue; Engineering; False alarm; Intensive care; Interdisciplinary; Nursing.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Alert Fatigue, Health Personnel*
Bibliometrics
Critical Care* / methods
Humans
Intensive Care Units
Monitoring, Physiologic / methods