Emergency Nurses' Knowledge, Perceptions, and Practices Toward Alarm Fatigue and the Obstacles to Alarm Management: A Path Analysis

Introduction: Frequent and long-term exposure to clinical alarms can cause emergency nurses to lose their trust in alarms, delay their response, and even disable or mute these alarms.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess emergency nurses' knowledge, perceptions, and practices toward clinical alarm fatigue and investigate the perceived obstacles they face when managing clinical alarms.

Results: Less than half of emergency nurses were unfamiliar with the term "alarm fatigue" (40.8%), lacked knowledge of the causes of alarm fatigue (42.3%), and were unaware of how to prevent alarm fatigue (45.7%). Emergency nurses' knowledge of clinical alarms was found to have a significant negative correlation with their perceived obstacles to the management of these alarms (r = -6.855; P < .001) and a significant positive correlation with their practice in the management of clinical alarms (r = 2.576; P = .010). In contrast, perceived obstacles to the effective management of clinical alarms were found to have a significant positive correlation with emergency nurses' negative perception of clinical alarms (r = 12.449; P < .001). A significant negative correlation was observed between emergency nurses' negative perception of clinical alarms and their practice in the management of these alarms (r = -2.697; P = .007).

Discussion: Clinical alarms represent an additional burden for emergency nurses where a substantial proportion of nurses have limited familiarity with alarm fatigue, lack knowledge about its causes and prevention strategies, and do not customize patient alarm parameters throughout their shifts.