Health care providers are expressing concern that the growing use of heart monitors in hospitals is leading nurses to experience alarm fatigue, the Boston Globe reports.
Alarm fatigue refers to medical workers ignoring or becoming desensitized to audio and visual alerts from medical devices.
Using Heart Monitors
The growing use of heart monitors allows hospital staff to care for patients with more serious health conditions on regular floors of the facility.
Using such monitors also allows hospitals to admit patients more quickly, thereby reducing traffic in emergency departments.
Health Care Providers Express Concern
However, more health care providers are questioning the widespread use of heart monitors. They say that greater use of the devices means that nurses hear more beeps from the monitors and are becoming desensitized to the alarms.
David Bates -- chief quality officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston -- said the issue could worsen as hospitals implement monitors to help avoid medical errors.
Research on Alarm Fatigue
According to an analysis published by the Globe last year, dozens of patient deaths in the U.S. have been linked to alarm-related issues.
A separate study of 17 hospitals worldwide published in the Journal of Electrocardiology in 2010 found that 26% of patients who were being monitored for abnormal heart rhythms at the hospitals did not meet the requirements for needing to be monitored.
Meanwhile, a recent California study found that nearly 80% of monitor alarms are triggered from minor issues such as a patient's cough or repositioning in bed (Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, 12/29/11).