The design should include provision of means for the
operators to report about
missing alarms, and the operators should be instructed to notice situations of
missing alarms and to record these events.The rate of false alarms should be based on comparing the risks of inadequate responding to false alarms with those of missing true alarms.
The method proposed here is by gradual reduction of the rate of false alarms.
The operation begins with high rate of false alarms, for all alarms. This is obtained by setting alarm thresholds enabling relatively high percent of false alarms.
Assume that the temperature of 90% of the patient temperature measurements is below 37 degrees Celsius. Then, by setting the threshold at 37 degrees, the rate of false alarms should be 10%.
When running the system, we record the operator's reaction time, namely, the elapsed time from the trigger to the operator's acknowledgement of the alarm. When the reaction time is significantly more than the normal (the bottom of the fatigue chart ...) the operators are required to adjust the threshold.
When alarm fatigue is detected is detected ... on responding to patient temperature over 37 degrees, the operators can raise the alarm threshold, to reduce the rate of false alarms.
The system can guide the operators about the proper adjustment of alarm threshold. This may be possible, if the operators can report on situations in which they notice that an important alarm was missing.
The design should include provision of means for the
operators to report about
missing alarms, and the operators should be instructed to notice situations of
missing alarms and to record these events.
The adjustment of the threshold should be such that the risk (cost times rate) of wrong responding to false alarms equals that of not responding to true alarms.
Updated on 13 Mar 2017.