Alarm Fatigue among Nurses Working in Critical Care Setting in a Tertiary Hospital, Nepal

Background Alarm fatigue is a well-recognized patient safety concern in critical care settings. It occurs when nurses become overwhelmed by the total number of alarm signals which can result in alarm desensitization and eventually contributes to missing of serious and important changes in a patient's condition, thus failing to respond properly. Objective To find out alarm fatigue and its associated factors among nurses working in critical care setting. Method A cross-sectional study design with convenient sampling technique was used to select 56 nurses working at different critical care settings in Dhulikhel Hospital. A selfconstructed semi structured questionnaire and nurses alarm fatigue questionnaire was used for the survey. Frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used for descriptive statistics whereas Independent t-test and One-way ANOVA were used for inferential statistics. Result The result shows that more than half of the nurses were less than 25 years, single and more than two-third of the participants worked in Adult Intensive Care Unit. Out of total obtainable score 44, the overall mean score of the Alarm Fatigue was 28.03±12.813. The result showed that there was no significant difference between alarm fatigue and selected socio-demographic and work related characteristics. Conclusion The alarm fatigue among nurses working in critical care settings was found to be higher in this study. Since alarm fatigue is directly related to patients' safety, the effective management of medical device alarms can reduce alarm fatigue and prevent potentially dangerous outcomes.

RESEARCH-BASED DEVELOPMENT OF CONSUMER DRUG INFORMATION PAMPHLET AT TRIBHUVAN UNIVERSITY TEACHING HOSPITAL IN NEPAL

Considering the generally low priority given to educating consumers in Nepal andalso as a part of its commitment towards consumer awareness, the Drug InformationUnit of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) developed and distributed aconsumer education pamphlet on basic do's and don'ts about medicines. Themethodology of the development of this pamphlet included: (1) a questionnaire interviewof visitors (n=604) of patients admitted to TUTH to find out the existing level ofknowledge on basic facts about medicines, (2) development of a draft pamphlet, mainlybased on the findings of this baseline survey, (3) pretesting of the draft pamphlet onpatients’ visitors (n=614) at TUTH and subject experts (n=13) to get their commentsand suggestions on the text, language, drawings and presentation, and (4) revision ofthe pamphlet based on the pretest and its final printing. The present work thusrepresents a research-based approach to the development of public education material.Key Words: Rational drug use; public education; consumer awareness;drug information pamphlet; Nepal.