Background: Nurses working in an intensive care unit (ICU) are dependent on various medical devices to assist with patient monitoring, care and safety. Alarm fatigue is a consequence of an excessive number of alarms in the practice environment. The goal of this research was to identify the effect of applying alarm fatigue strategies related to nursing performance and to evaluate nurses’ perceptions concerning to alarm fatigue in intensive care unit King Abdullah medical city, Makkah.
Methods: The study type was a cross-sectional design. A sample of 85 nurses was obtained using a survey instrument that was created using a structured self-administered questionnaire designed based on literature review.
Results: The most rated mean score for Strategies that reduce the alarm fatigue was education and remaining was optimized technology, electrodes, setup customized alarms, and attitude respectively. When proving hypothesis, the findings demonstrate that there are no statistically significant differences between the nurses’ alarm fatigue with study variables including gender, age, professional experience and staff position. The use of an evidence-based alarm management strategy can reduce alarm fatigue and ensure the safety of all monitored patients. Therefore, the above strategies on alarm management will be beneficial to reduce the alarm fatigue.
Conclusions: This study’s findings have several practical implications on reducing alarm fatigue in intensive care unit. Nurses play a significant role on monitoring the patients, which may leads to alarm related fatigue.