Measuring Alarm System Quality in ICUs (WIP)

Abstract

Despite a vast and growing number of publications on alarm fatigue there seem to be few attempts to quantify in a systematic way the root causes or consequences of alarm fatigue. The paper describes such an attempt, based on the notion of quality dimensions of an alarm system. The concept as well as concrete instances of these dimensions were developed in a scoping review including focus group interviews and subsequent iterative refinement workshops. The resulting model goes beyond currently used statistics for describing alarm system quality and appears to be useful for the construction of tools to support clinical users in the management of their alarm system.