NR 361 Week 6 Discussion: Distractors in our Environment
Distractions are everywhere. They may include cellphones, multiple alarms sounding,
overhead paging, monitors beeping, and various interruptions that disrupt your clinical
practice. Give an example of an ethical or legal issue that may arise if a patient has a poor
outcome or sentinel event because of a distraction such as alarm fatigue. What does
evidence reveal about alarm fatigue and distractions in healthcare when it comes to patient
safety?
Answer:
Distractions are everywhere. They may include cellphones, multiple alarms sounding, overhead
paging, monitors beeping, and various interruptions that disrupt our clinical practice. I know
when I am on the unit, I can tune out certain sounds due to constantly working in that
environment it becomes white noise. I can recall working on a vent floor early in my career and
at first every beep I tended to. It caused me to be exhausted every night the up and down along
with the back and forth. Frequent false alarms as the biggest problem, and nearly 20% of
respondents reported they knew of a false alarm–related adverse events despite institutional
initiatives designed to address the problem (Winter et al, 2018).
There are several ethical and or legal issue that can arise from these distractions. Research has
demonstrated that 72% to 99% of clinical alarms are false. The high number of false alarms has
led to alarm fatigue (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). It has been determined that the result is
desensitization to alarms and or missed alarms. Over medicating of patient’s post, a procedure
has been any issue. Clinician will over medicate to decrease the amount of call bells for pain
management. This can result in respiratory depression or false sense the patient is recovering
well due to lack of check-in on them. Even more server, patient deaths have been attributed to
Distractions are everywhere. They may include cellphones, multiple alarms sounding,
overhead paging, monitors beeping, and various interruptions that disrupt your clinical
practice. Give an example of an ethical or legal issue that may arise if a patient has a poor
outcome or sentinel event because of a distraction such as alarm fatigue. What does
evidence reveal about alarm fatigue and distractions in healthcare when it comes to patient
safety?
Answer:
Distractions are everywhere. They may include cellphones, multiple alarms sounding, overhead
paging, monitors beeping, and various interruptions that disrupt our clinical practice. I know
when I am on the unit, I can tune out certain sounds due to constantly working in that
environment it becomes white noise. I can recall working on a vent floor early in my career and
at first every beep I tended to. It caused me to be exhausted every night the up and down along
with the back and forth. Frequent false alarms as the biggest problem, and nearly 20% of
respondents reported they knew of a false alarm–related adverse events despite institutional
initiatives designed to address the problem (Winter et al, 2018).
There are several ethical and or legal issue that can arise from these distractions. Research has
demonstrated that 72% to 99% of clinical alarms are false. The high number of false alarms has
led to alarm fatigue (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). It has been determined that the result is
desensitization to alarms and or missed alarms. Over medicating of patient’s post, a procedure
has been any issue. Clinician will over medicate to decrease the amount of call bells for pain
management. This can result in respiratory depression or false sense the patient is recovering
well due to lack of check-in on them. Even more server, patient deaths have been attributed to
