Chapter 5: Implications And Conclusions

Chapter 5: Implications, Recommendations, and Conclusions
Alarm fatigue remains a national healthcare concern in spite of an increased awareness of the problem. The effect of alarm fatigue on patient safety is well documented in the literature. There is insufficient literature that supports the best methodology to educate nurses on managing physiological alarms appropriately. This project was conducted to determine if one method of educating nurses to alarm fatigue was more effective over another. Alarm data was collected prior to any form of alarm management education and again after online education and once more after traditional face-to-face education. The number of alarms from each data point was compared to the others. Nurses are ethically obligated to provide patient-centered care and keep their patients from harm. Determining the best approach to educate nurses on managing alarms is essential. This chapter will discuss the implications, …show more content…
The reduction in the number of alarms after each intervention suggests that the education had an impact on how the nurse managed the patient alarms. Although, the number of alarms after the online education was reduced by 19 percent and the number of alarms after the traditional education was reduced by 48 percent it is not accurate to conclude that the traditional education was superior over the online education. The results do support that a combination of both the online education and the traditional face to face education did have an impact on reducing the number of alarms. A reduction in the number of false non-actionable alarms is associated with lessening the effect of alarm fatigue therefore increasing patient safety. The study further suggests that continuing nursing education and a commitment to life-long learning impacts patent