The Dangers of Ventilator Alarm Fatigue and How to Prevent It About 100 patients per year die due to ventilator fatigue involving their health care givers. The problems that led to these tragedies were identified as due to human error, not a problem with machine malfunction. Most of these patients quit breathing, but, if health care workers had realized what the medical alarm meant and responded in time, those patients might have been saved. As you'll see, ventilator fatigue is just a part of life in critical care units. But patients can't continue to die because of human error. Here's the scoop on recognizing ventilator fatigue and what to do about it. What Ventilator Fatigue Is In the average intensive care unit, there are about 40 different sources of alarm noise, including ventilators, heart monitors, automatic syringes, pulse oximetry machines, dialysis systems, perfusion pumps, and others. One manufacturer puts out a ventilator that features 111 different alarms. All the noise leads to stress, and attempts to block out the noise so health care workers can concentrate. Ventilator fatigue occurs when workers have simply tuned out or ignored a ventilator alarm in the midst of all the other noise. Current Solutions for Ventilator Fatigue Both European and American health care officials have proposed solutions for ventilator fatigue to help prevent patient harm, and potential death. The Europeans propose a three-level system, identifying alarm types according to high, medium, and low priorities. Americans have developed a similar system, but it is left up to individual health care facilities to implement policies and procedures within their organizations to combat ventilator fatigue. About 80 percent of the alarms a health care giver hears during each shift are false alarms. This becomes annoying and affects the care giver's ability to administer quality bedside care to their patients. Adding to the confusion is the sheer difference in age and physical condition of their patients. If alarms are set to monitor an infant, for instance, the same respiration that is normal for them is not normal if the alarm is used on a 50-year old patient who is morbidly obese. Hence, training becomes an essential part of combating ventilator fatigue. Workers need to be trained how to use the machines, as well as how to set the alarms on the monitors. In many instances, death or permanent harm has been inflicted after a frustrated health care worker simply shut off a ventilator alarm in order to get some peace to care for a patient. Solutions such as the Systems Technologies wireless ventilator alarm are also available to help eliminate nuisance alarms and reduce staff frustration. This combines a wireless transmitter with a programmable timer that is set to allow the patient to sneeze or perform other normal bodily functions before sending an urgent alarm directly to nursing staff pagers, iPads, iPods, cellular phones as well as strobe lights or other notification devices. The Future of Preventing Ventilator Fatigue
While algorithms will likely be the key to future solutions in addressing fatigue to medical alarms, companies like Systems Technologies already offer a variety of solutions for addressing ventilator alarm fatigue and other issues within critical care settings. Working toward the future, new alarms will need to be developed that can automatically correct for common errors in reading data, and these alarms will need to be adjustable according to the needs and condition of the patient, and the needs and demands of the health care provider. Whatever the long-term solution ends up being, training will still be essential. Workers in critical care environments need to understand all of the different alarm sounds and what they mean. Policies regarding who has the authority to set alarms have to be established, and strategies to reduce alarm noise and fatigue have to be in place. With proper training, problems with patient care due to medical alarms can be reduced or completely eliminated.