White (2012) states “nurses can no longer rely on their clinical experience to provide quality care. Nurses routinely need to question their practice and look for alternative methods to improve the process of care” (p. 4). Evidence supports that modifications in nursing practice cultivated by research improves patient outcomes. There is no one better than the bedside nurse to question and identify patient care problems. Once a problem is identified the nurse has the duty to question if the care being provided is supported by evidence. When evidence is lacking to support best practice a topic for research has been identified (Siedlecki, 2008).
Once the topic has been identifies, the next step is to develop a problem statement. The problem statement tells the reader why the subject being presented is important. For this author’s project on reducing alarm fatigue, the problem statement is as follows: Alarm fatigue continues to be a national health care concern. The problem has made the top 10 list of health care concerns by the ECRI Institute for the past five years and as the number one in 2015 and 2014 (ECRI, Institute, 2015). Alarm fatigue is clearly documented in the literature from many health care agencies and nursing organization including The Joint Commission (TJC) and the American Association of Critical Care Nurse (AACN). These organizations state that mismanagement of alarms has been determined to be the root cause of hundreds of deaths and harms to patients (Sendelbach, S., & Funk, M., 2013), (The Joint Commission, 2013). Despite online educational modules on alarm management and alarm fatigue, the nurses in Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) continue to mismanage alarms and experience alarm fatigue. Online education regarding alarm management has not been sufficient to change the attitudes and behaviors of the nursing staff in the CICU. This is a significant problem because it is putting the patients in the CICU lives’ a risk. The hypothesis of this study is that live classroom education as opposed to online education, will change the attitudes and behaviors of the nursing staff in the CICU. By providing face to face education, in addition to real life application in a learning environment, the nursing staff in the CICU will manage alarms appropriately thus reducing the number of false activations. It is further assumed that this education will reduce alarm fatigue in turn reducing the patient’s rick of harm. The null hypothesis is that there will no change in alarm management and no change in the number of alarms on the unit. There have been multiple research studies done on the existence and effects of alarm fatigue. …show more content…
There are also numerous publications on evidence-based interventions to reduce the problem. A meta-analysis was conducted on this subject. The search of PubMed and Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) for articles relating to alarm desensitization, alarm management, and patient harm in resulted in 177 articles, with 72 being used for this particular study (Cvach, 2012). Although there are numerous studies on the subject, there is little evidence comparing how staff are educated to the evidence-based bundles and how the method of educating staff changed the attitudes and behavior of the nurse. It is for this reason this author feels more studies need to be conducted on how nurses are trained to manage alarms. This research will