The Importance of Testing Sets of Clinical Alarm Sounds and Navigating Tradeoffs to Translate Research Findings into Implementation

Abstract

Despite noticeable efforts over the last 30 years to try and resolve the clinical alarm problem, the utilization of opinion-based and nonscientific alarm interventions has resulted in ineffective solutions. The field of human factors offers many insights to permanently solving the burdens of this problem, however often times the field’s direct applications are not salient or tangible enough to organizational stakeholders. This has resulted in a utilization deficit of human factors principles in practice today. In order to progress the level of impact human factors has on the clinical alarm problem for the future, this paper discusses how a human factors team tested science-based clinical alarm solutions within a multidisciplinary medical center, and then navigated tradeoffs in order to implement these solutions into practice.

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