Table 5. Comparison of nurses’ experience of alarms pre- and post-intervention.
| Survey Item | Pre (N = 66) |
Post (N = 44) |
P |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patient monitors on my unit are currently issuing too many alarms (Strongly agree or agree) | 68.2% | 54.5% | 0.147a |
| I feel overwhelmed by too many alarms (Strongly agree or agree) | 50.0% | 47.7% | 0.815a |
| The current alarm load on my unit disturbs my workflow (Strongly agree or agree) | 66.7% | 45.5% | 0.027a |
| How much of your nursing time is consumed by responding to non-actionable alarms? (≥ 20%) | 63.6% | 41.9% | 0.026a |
| How often do you adjust your patient’s alarm limits (Always or often) | 69.7% | 65.9% | 0.676a |
| In the last 4 weeks, how often did you encounter a situation where a patient needed urgent attention, but no one responded to the alarm? (Often or sometimes) | 43.9% | 25.0% | 0.043a |
| # of minutes spent handling unnecessary alarms for 1 patient per shift | 0.995b | ||
| Median (IQR) | 20.0 (10.0–30.0) | 20.0 (10.0–30.0) | |
| Mean | 28.2 | 25.2 |
aChi-square
bWilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test