NR 361 Week 6

NR 361 Week 6

Name

Chamberlain University

NR-361: RN Information Systems in Healthcare

Prof. Name

Date

Week 6: Distractions and Their Impact on Patient Safety

Distractions are prevalent in healthcare environments, posing risks to patient care. These distractions may include the frequent use of cellphones, alarms ringing for various reasons, overhead paging systems, monitors beeping, and staff members interrupting the flow of thoughts. All these elements create a distracting environment that could lead to detrimental outcomes. One notable example is the occurrence of ethical or legal issues if a patient experiences poor outcomes or a sentinel event due to distractions such as alarm fatigue.

Nurses have a professional responsibility to follow a code of ethics, which mandates that they “promote, advocate for, and strive to protect the health, safety, and rights of the patient” (Lachman, 2006). The duty to ensure patient safety becomes compromised when nurses, affected by alarm fatigue, fail to respond to alarms appropriately. Ignoring or missing alarms, even unintentionally, may result in severe harm to patients and open healthcare providers to negligence lawsuits. Negligence is defined as “the doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do, or the failure to do something which a reasonably prudent person would do, under similar circumstances” (Ashley, 2003, p. 72).

Alarm fatigue has been identified as a contributor to sentinel events and patient deaths. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported 566 deaths related to monitoring alarms between 2005 and 2008 (American Journal of Critical Care, 2014, p. e10). In response to these concerns, the Joint Commission introduced a National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) in 2016 that emphasizes the importance of alarm management (Funk, Clark, Bauld, Ott, & Coss, 2014, p. e18). Hospitals are encouraged to establish alarm safety as a priority and to implement policies and procedures aimed at reducing alarm fatigue to protect patient safety (The Joint Commission, 2015).

Ethical and Legal Issues Related to Alarm Fatigue

References

Ashley, R. C. (2003). Understanding Negligence. Critical Care Nurse, 23(5), 72-73.
Funk, M., Clark, J. T., Bauld, T. J., Ott, J. C., & Coss, P. (2014). Attitudes and Practices Related to Clinical Alarms. American Journal Of Critical Care, 23(3), e9-e18. https://doi.org/10.4037/ajcc2014315

NR 361 Week 6

Lachman, V. D. (2006). Applied Ethics in Nursing. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
The Joint Commission. (2015). National Patient Safety Goals Effective January 1, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/6/2016_NPSG_HAP.pdf