Key Stakeholders Alarm Fatigue and How to Reduce It

PROFESSIONAL CAPSTONE 6

Alarm Fatigue and How to Reduce It: Key Stakeholders

The selected research topic is ‘Alarm Fatigue and How to Reduce It’. As Chromik et al. (2022) indicate, alarm fatigue is sensory overload that occurs when healthcare professionals are exposed to the constant noise of medical device alarms, leading to desensitization that results in delayed response or missed alarms altogether. Based on the available literature, the research hypothesizes that alarm management training would be beneficial in reducing alarm fatigue and non-actionable alarms among nurses. This assignment identifies the key stakeholders in the research and their roles and also explores potential barriers that could affect the incorporation of the project findings at the selected clinical site.

Key Stakeholders and their Relationship to the Project

Stakeholders in the project could be divided into two: internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders enjoy a direct relationship with the healthcare organization through investment, ownership, or employment. External stakeholders do not enjoy a direct relationship with the organization or the project, but are affected by its findings.

Internal Stakeholders

One of the most crucial internal stakeholders are the clinical staff working in the healthcare organization. Their primary role is to ensure that the patients they serve receive proper healthcare (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020). They serve as the patients’ advocates. The proposed project focuses on one group of staff – nurses. Their role in the project is to undergo alarm management training to demonstrate how effectively such training reduces alarm fatigue, including the number of non-actionable alarms. Thus, the nurses will serve as research subjects in the project. Their fatigue scores and frequency of non-actionable alarms will be measured at baseline and upon completion of the three-month alarm management training program to determine whether there are significant differences in the pre and post-intervention mean scores. The project has a significant effect on them as it imposes an additional burden of having to attend compulsory training sessions and to change their routine practices as they seek to enhance their alarm management skills.

The second group of internal stakeholders is the healthcare organization’s top leadership and board of management. Their primary role in the organization is to provide leadership and ensure future sustainability by ensuring the organization has the required resources to realize its mission (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020). These stakeholders also ensure that the organization has sound financial management, legal governance, and ethical policies for effective operations (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020). In the project, these stakeholders have the role of providing the resources needed to implement the practice change and to develop policies and frameworks for effective implementation of the change. The project imposes on these stakeholders an additional burden of acquiring the financial, human, and material resources needed to implement the practice change and ensure that it is embedded into the organizational culture. However, they are likely to support it as it contributes towards the improvement of policy and enhances overall effectiveness in patient care.

The third category of internal stakeholders are donors or volunteers who dedicate their time and resources for the success of the healthcare organization. These are mainly investors in the project. They are likely to support the project since they maximize their investments when the organization operates more efficiently, effectively and attracts more customers.

External Stakeholders

The first group of external stakeholders are the organization’s patients and their families. Patients have an interest in their health and wellbeing, and will be more satisfied if they receive high quality healthcare (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020). Patients are likely to be in support of the proposed project because as alarm fatigue reduces, nurses are able to serve them better, with a lower risk of deaths or injury resulting from false or non-actionable alarms. Since the healthcare industry is a consumers’ market, patients are crucial external stakeholders as their experiences and their relationships with nurses will help in assessing whether the project realized the intended objective.

The government is also a crucial external stakeholder. Healthcare is a human right and the government has a constitutional duty to ensure all citizens have access to proper healthcare. The project seeks to enhance the quality of care given to patients at the clinical site by reducing alarm fatigue among nurses. In so doing, the project helps the government in its duty of ensuring access to quality healthcare. Further, the government could use the findings of the project to inform future government policy, such as budgetary allocations to the healthcare sector.

The final group of external stakeholders are medical device manufacturers who manufacture the equipment, including alarm systems that medical staff use to carry out their duties. Their role is to use advancements in technology to develop alarm systems that minimize the risk of false alarms to ensure effective operations. The project may reduce their revenues because if the staff are properly trained on how to manage alarms, there would be a lesser need for organizations to keep acquiring new alarm systems.

Obstacles to Project Implementation

The two main obstacles to the project change’s incorporation are staff resistance and resource limitations. The staff may resist the practice change as it requires them to change from what they consider the norm and to adopt a new way of managing alarms at the healthcare organization. Staff resistance may lead to sabotage, which could hinder the project’s effective implementation and adoption, making it difficult to realize the intended outcomes (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020). The management could limit staff resistance by ensuring that the staff own the project change. This would require the staff to be adequately engaged in designing the project, such as when the trainings are to be carried out, why the project is necessary, how assessments are to be done, the methods of instruction, and so on. This would make them active participants, rather than passive players in the project (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020). They would perceive themselves as owners in the project and are more likely to appreciate its impact and less likely to show resistance towards it (Liebler & McConnelll, 2020).