Determining Alarm Fatigue Among Nurses in Paediatric and Adult Intensive Care Units: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted to determine the alarm fatigue of nurses working in pediatric and adult intensive care clinics. Material and Methods: The sample of the descriptive and cross-sectional study consisted of 166 nurses. The STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational Studies in Epidemiology checklist was used in the study. Data were collected by contacting nurses and sharing the link to the Google Survey via e-mail and WhatsApp groups between February-April 2021. It took the participants 5-10 minutes to fill in the data collection tools. Nurses' Introductory Information Form prepared by the researchers and the Nurses' Alarm Fatigue Scale was used to collect the data. Results: The mean score of the Nurses' Alarm Fatigue Scale was 18.02±5.94 which was moderate. The analysis also demonstrated that the length of service in the profession, the length of service in the intensive care unit (ICU), the ICU worked in, and the work shifts variables did not statistically significantly affect the mean scores obtained by the participants. However, the weekly working hours variable statistically significantly affected the mean scores obtained by the participants (p=0.019). Finally, the variable of the presence of a noise meter in the ICUs where the nurses involved in the study worked statistically significantly affected the mean scores obtained by the participants (p=0.009). Conclusion: The nurses experienced alarm fatigue moderately and their sociodemographic characteristics did not affect the level of alarm fatigue. It was concluded that increased weekly working hours and lack of noise meters in the ICUs increased the nurses' alarm fatigue levels.