Quite Alarming! Reducing the Incidence of False Alarms to Prevent Alarm Fatigue

After attending AACN NTI 2013, the NTI Action Pak – Alarm Management was presented to the cardiac performance improvement council. The council reviewed the literature, including the AACN Practice Alert on Alarm Fatigue.  Excessive alarms, especially false ones, can desensitize medical personnel causing delay or no response that may lead to an adverse event. A false alarm is when an alarm sounds in response to inappropriate stimuli.  A true alarm is when an alarm sounds in response to an event that needs an action.  To assess our current situation with alarm management, a pre-data survey was sent to cardiac nurses to determine if the skin prep EBP guidelines were being utilized in daily practice.  The survey included these questions: 1. How often do you prep the skin prior to electrode placement? and 2) How often do you change the electrode patches?   In addition, data was collected on 57 telemetry patients on the cardiac and noncardiac units who are monitored at a central station.  The data captured all arrhythmia alarms: false and true alarms and causes of alarms. Data was collected for 24 hours per patient.