Responding efficiently to alerts and alarms triggered by patients using nurse call systems and by the facility’s security systems is essential for patient and staff safety and well-being. Efficiency and quick call response times matter and can be a matter of life and death in some situations. Longer call response times can be caused by several factors, including alarm fatigue or alert fatigue. Here is what to know about alarm fatigue and some ways to combat alarm fatigue in healthcare facilities:

What is Alarm Fatigue?

The National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists defines alarm fatigue as the sensory overload caused by an overwhelming number of alarms or alerts that leads to desensitization and nonreactivity to those alarms.

This can become common, especially when many of the alarms are nuisance alarms, false alarms, or non-actionable alarms. When alarm fatigue occurs, this desensitization can result in ignored or silenced alarms, delayed response to alarms, missed alarms, and more, all of which can become critical safety issues.

7 Ways to Combat Alarm Fatigue in Healthcare Facilities

Alarm fatigue affects nurses and clinicians, patients, and their families. This is why it is considered one of the common security threats and vulnerabilities of hospitals. The overwhelming number of alarms, especially when they are not alerting to actual issues, can cause anxiety all around in addition to wasting valuable resources, time, and energy.

Improving efficiency and care by reducing false alarms and combating alarm fatigue can have a positive impact on staff and patient experience and well-being. Here are a few ways to combat alarm fatigue in healthcare facilities:

1. Review current inventory, resources, policies, and procedures.
2. Examine actionable vs non-actionable notifications.
3. Use integrated products and systems.
4. Customize devices to specific patient parameters.
5. Implement an advanced nurse call system.
6. Integrate with an incident management system.
7. Regularly clean and maintain equipment.

1. Review Current Inventory, Resources, Policies, and Procedures

One of the best ways to combat alarm fatigue in healthcare facilities is to take stock of everything in your current facility and operations and identify areas for immediate improvement.

Start With an Audit of Every Unit

Similar to conducting a building vulnerability assessment, you’re essentially conducting an audit of your current inventory, resources, policies, and procedures, with effective alarm management and alarm safety at the forefront. This is often done via an overall assessment, and especially with alert assessments on each unit/ward to evaluate their unique environment and make specific improvements for every floor.

Dig Deep Into Processes and Procedures

This will give you a starting point for things to start improving beyond what is obvious on the surface, and identify where you need to train your team on your security systems. If you are short-staffed, hiring more staff can help with alarm management and reduce alarm fatigue. An issue or redundancy in an outdated procedure or policy could be contributing to alarm fatigue, but may not be as obvious until you do a proper review.

2. Examine Actionable vs Non-Actionable Notifications

While examining processes, also review your notifications and audit the settings and rules for your notification systems. Specifically, you want to review and examine actionable alerts vs non-actionable alerts.

You could even find that you have alarms triggered in areas or situations where no alarm is needed! Dig deeper into the non-actionable alerts to determine if they are necessary or a nuisance. This is one of the ways to improve nurse call workflows & increase staff efficiency.

Non-Actionable, Necessary Alerts

If they are necessary, look at who is being alerted to them and how. Make sure they are only going to the people who are supposed to receive them or into a system for review by the people who need to be aware and monitoring them.

Non-Actionable, Nuisance Alerts

If they are not necessary and it turns out they are a nuisance, adjust the settings or rules for your systems. By adjusting the alarm triggers or threshold for monitoring, you can remove non-actionable nuisance notifications, which helps combat alarm fatigue while also improving the patient’s atmosphere and improving staff efficiency and responsiveness. As an added bonus, improving patient experience and care can help hospitals boost HCAHPS scores.

3. Use Integrated Products and Systems

Between equipment monitors, physiologic monitors, physical safety alarms, wearables, and other products and systems, there is a ton of potential for alarms, which also increases the frequency of false alarms. Cardiac monitors, wander management wearables, IV pumps, bed exit alarms, mobile duress alarms, etc. can result in situations where there are hundreds of alarms per patient per day.

With the potential of 80-99% of alarms being false alarms and not requiring clinical intervention, it’s easy to see how alarm fatigue can occur. If your facility currently has separate systems and products that all send their own alarms, upgrading to integrated products and systems to consolidate this information can help reduce nuisance alarms.

This can help ensure that alarms and alerts that go out are more likely to be “real” alarms and that healthcare staff are spending time responding to what is important. This becomes even more important when there are staff attack alarms in the mix. You can also implement sound masking in healthcare environments to help reduce the negative effects of consistent noise on both staff and patients while also improving patient privacy and patient care.

4. Customize Devices to Specific Patient Parameters

Some false alarms are caused by standard settings on patient wearables or devices being applied broadly to all patients. Instead, adjust the settings and customize the monitoring on the device to each patient.

If the device is calibrated to an individual patient’s specific parameters and conditions, it ensures the alarms that go out for that patient are clinically relevant for them and for your medical staff. You can also adjust thresholds to customize priority and urgency for specific patients. Although some situations are critical for anyone, in other situations, what is considered critical can vary from patient to patient.

5. Implement an Advanced Nurse Call System

You need a system in place to manage all of those calls and responses in the unit. An advanced nurse call system can provide the right mix of alerting devices and an integrated system to back up managing calls and alerts. Choosing the best nurse call system for your facility can make a big difference.

Nurse call systems improve patient safety, improve response times, and can even help reduce false alarms. Alerts can be viewed, claimed, managed, and monitored on the go. The best systems can also be customized to fit your operations and often also provide automated, customizable workflows and parameters to help manage calls as they come in.

These are all essential components of nurse call systems that also allow adjustments to alarm parameter thresholds to reduce nuisance alarms. Alarm settings can be customized and adjusted to individual patient needs, per unit, and more. Any wearables integrated with the system can be monitored for proper function and maintenance to avoid alarms caused by an equipment malfunction. These are all ways healthcare facilities use emergency notification systems and nurse call systems effectively.

6. Integrate With an Incident Management System

One of the main reasons to use incident management software is to monitor your facility and be able to identify areas for improvement. Being able to integrate emergency call, nurse call, and other security systems with an incident management system allows you to generate reports and review what is going on in and around your facility.

This can be a useful method for seeing where and how alarm fatigue is at risk of occurring, and gives you valuable insights on how to address it before it becomes an issue. Doing this periodically could highlight a missing security product, system, or integration that needs to be included in security budget planning.

You could also identify a need for changing or improving a specific process or workflow. This approach allows you to continue to monitor and make improvements over time to ensure the security, health, and safety of your facility and everyone in it.

7. Regularly Clean and Maintain Equipment

Faulty equipment or components can be a cause of false alarms, which can contribute to alarm fatigue. Regularly cleaning and maintaining equipment, including components, sensors, etc., according to the manufacturer’s care instructions can help prevent falsely triggered alarms due to dirty or faulty equipment.

Plus, regular maintenance schedules should also include inspecting equipment. This will help keep equipment performing its best and allow any potential issues to be identified early and addressed before they trigger false alarms. This is also a key best practice for managing and maintaining security systems, including things like alarm systems, nurse call systems, and more.

3 Basic Tips for Equipment Maintenance in Healthcare

Here are some basic tips for equipment maintenance in healthcare that can help reduce false alarms and combat alarm fatigue:

• Clean and replace components to ensure everything works properly.
• Regularly replace single-use components.
• Set routine schedules for equipment inspection and maintenance.

If there are battery-operated components, many systems have built-in low-battery alerts to prevent alarm issues from low or failing batteries. An effective asset management system can also help monitor equipment performance and track maintenance schedules on equipment, which can also help reduce false alarms and combat alarm fatigue. These are some of the benefits of effective asset management in healthcare.

Increase Efficiency and Combat Alarm Fatigue With Comprehensive Healthcare Security

These are just a few ways to combat alarm fatigue in healthcare facilities, including hospitals, assisted living facilities, senior living facilities, and more. Comprehensive healthcare security solutions that are installed correctly, integrated well, and customized for your operations make a big difference in combating alarm fatigue, increasing efficiency, and securing your facility overall. If you need to improve your healthcare facility’s security, contact NEPPS at 1-800-736-1456 to schedule a free site assessment.