What every intensivist should know about how to survive alarm fatigue with the F.ALARM method

Abstract

‘Alarm fatigue’ is a term which refers to the problems experienced by healthcare providers (HCP) in critical care which are related to the excessive occurrence of alarm signals (auditory or visual) which can lead to important alarms being missed [[6], [7],8,13]. Reasons for missed alarms include excessive not-clinically-actionable alarms, the sheer noise and disruption caused by the way alarms typically sound, and problems of confusion between alarms which might be misunderstood, or simple masking (acoustic occluding) of one alarm by another [3]. Alarms are needed for patient monitoring and helpful in identifying early signs of a developing problem. It is worth to take steps to reduce the likelihood of mistakes due to alarms in the critical care environment (i.e., intensive care units, emergency rooms, operating theatres). The target is to ensure all alarms that are needed are functioning, true (i.e., actionable), audible (unmasked by other alarms going off at the same time), and actionable (i.e., confusion is kept to a minimum). Below, we will elaborate more on five selected target areas that healthcare providers in critical care can benefit from: [...]