Sartre slogan states “existence precedes essence”. This statement essentially serves as the main distinction of existentialism from other philosophical theories. The idea behind it is that humans are not fixed by what type they are: labels, roles, stereotypes or other predefined categories. The slogan rather explains that it is what humans make of themselves and who they become consciously: what their values and what the meaning of their life that are essentials to a human being (Crowell, 2017). Sartre even put as “At first [Man] is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be” (Mastin, 2008).
In existentialism, existence is defined as “self-making-in-a-situation” (Fackenheim 1961, cited in Crowell, …show more content…
Scientific realism states that: 1) things do exist independent of our ability to verify or recognize that they do exist (Godfrey-Smith, 2003; Psillos, 2000), and 2) science aims to provide descriptions of what reality is accurately (Godfrey-Smith, 2003). Even though alarm fatigue cannot be observed directly, that does not mean it does not exist. Researchers, clinicians, and related stakeholders in general simply agree that alarm fatigue is an issue of overexposure, saturation, and desensitization to clinical alarms. In fact, the conclusion whether alarm fatigue did ‘exist’ was based on cases of several patients’ death as reported by media (Saltzman, 2013; Kowalczyk, 2010).
Recently, a group of researchers from Korea investigated an alarm fatigue score in ICU nurses (Cho et al., 2016), in which they used a new tool to measure “fatigue symptoms” of ICU nurses. They found that the mean score for the fatigue symptom was 24.3 (SD +- 4.0) out of 35. The tool itself had limitations: it was a modified tool from different studies and had no previous evidence of validity in measuring alarm fatigue in an ICU setting (Cho et al., 2016). The study tried to quantify the fatigue; although, the tool being used in the study needs further investigation to be able to verify that alarm fatigue …show more content…
Since alarm fatigue among ICU nurses is not directly observable, the evidence of a death in the case of a patient being cared for by “fatigued” nurses indirectly ‘proved’ that alarm fatigue exists. The death case that was reported on in The Boston Globe (Kowalczyk, 2010), however, provided a vague description on what the fatigue was. Readers could only make the indirect connections between desensitization due to excessive exposures to alarms and alarm fatigue. In their statements regarding the event, investigators for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “Changing audible arrhythmia alarms to inaudible and nurses not recalling hearing low HR alarms are indicative of alarm fatigue which contributed to the patient’s death” (Drew, 2014). This added to the fact that scientific studies even could not provide clear description of the ‘characteristics’ when alarm fatigue
In existentialism, existence is defined as “self-making-in-a-situation” (Fackenheim 1961, cited in Crowell, …show more content…
Scientific realism states that: 1) things do exist independent of our ability to verify or recognize that they do exist (Godfrey-Smith, 2003; Psillos, 2000), and 2) science aims to provide descriptions of what reality is accurately (Godfrey-Smith, 2003). Even though alarm fatigue cannot be observed directly, that does not mean it does not exist. Researchers, clinicians, and related stakeholders in general simply agree that alarm fatigue is an issue of overexposure, saturation, and desensitization to clinical alarms. In fact, the conclusion whether alarm fatigue did ‘exist’ was based on cases of several patients’ death as reported by media (Saltzman, 2013; Kowalczyk, 2010).
Recently, a group of researchers from Korea investigated an alarm fatigue score in ICU nurses (Cho et al., 2016), in which they used a new tool to measure “fatigue symptoms” of ICU nurses. They found that the mean score for the fatigue symptom was 24.3 (SD +- 4.0) out of 35. The tool itself had limitations: it was a modified tool from different studies and had no previous evidence of validity in measuring alarm fatigue in an ICU setting (Cho et al., 2016). The study tried to quantify the fatigue; although, the tool being used in the study needs further investigation to be able to verify that alarm fatigue …show more content…
Since alarm fatigue among ICU nurses is not directly observable, the evidence of a death in the case of a patient being cared for by “fatigued” nurses indirectly ‘proved’ that alarm fatigue exists. The death case that was reported on in The Boston Globe (Kowalczyk, 2010), however, provided a vague description on what the fatigue was. Readers could only make the indirect connections between desensitization due to excessive exposures to alarms and alarm fatigue. In their statements regarding the event, investigators for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “Changing audible arrhythmia alarms to inaudible and nurses not recalling hearing low HR alarms are indicative of alarm fatigue which contributed to the patient’s death” (Drew, 2014). This added to the fact that scientific studies even could not provide clear description of the ‘characteristics’ when alarm fatigue