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Alarm Compliance in Healthcare: Design Considerations for Actionable Alarms (In Intensive Care Units)

Part of: Design for Healthcare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Rosana Sanz-Segura ,
Eduardo Manchado Pérez  and
Elif Özcan
Rosana Sanz-Segura*
Affiliation:
School of Engineering and Architecture. University of Zaragoza;
Eduardo Manchado Pérez
Affiliation:
School of Engineering and Architecture. University of Zaragoza;
Elif Özcan
Affiliation:
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering Delft University of Technology. Department of Intensive Care Erasmus Medical Centre
*
Contact: Sanz-Segura, Rosana University of Zaragoza, Design and Manufacturing Engineering, Spain, rsanz@unizar.es

Abstract

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Intensive care units are technologically advanced environments that are designed to safeguard the patient while their vitals are stabilized for further treatment. Audible and visual alarms are part of the healthcare ecology. However, these alarms are so many that clinicians suffer from a syndrome called ‘alarm fatigue’ and often do not comply with the task alarm is conveying. Measuring compliance with rules in the workspace and determining the success of a system belongs to the field of ergonomics and is based on data collected through task observations and scoring. In this paper, we will explore compliance with critical alarms by not only from their potential success or failure perspective but also from the perspectives of the clinician capacity, needs, and motivations to comply with alarms in critical environments. We will finally, reflect on further possible design strategies to increase compliance in critical care that are beyond following rules per se but through intrinsic motivation.

Keywords

ComplianceDesign practiceDecision makingAudible alarmsDesign engineering
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 839 - 846
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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