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Alarm Fatigue: A Risk Assessment, Erica Baillargeon

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Alarm fatigue is the phenomenon which occurs when nurses become overwhelmed by the high number of alarms in the clinical environment. This is a significant patient safety issue as delayed or inappropriate responses can and have resulted in patient harm. The purpose of the observational study was to conduct a risk assessment of alarm fatigue at an acute care teaching hospital in Providence, RI. Observations of telemetry alarms and response were conducted, utilizing a standardized tool on two medical surgical units over a six week time period. Participants were 36 nurses working on the two units at time of observations. …