PERCEIVED STRESS AND ALARM FATIGUE AMONG NURSES DEALING WITH CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS: A CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY

• Published in: Journal of Health and Translational Medicine
• Main Author: Abdul Aziz N.N.; Isa R.B.; Isa S.N.; Wan Mansor W.A.; Priyantini D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya 2023
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85172221308&doi=10.22452%2fjummec.sp2023no2.18&partnerID=40&md5=d0549b2eb06d47e83a4c28604d0a7c1a

Nurses are exposed to many clinical monitoring alarms in managing critically ill patients, gradually leading temotional exhaustion and burnout. This situation is called alarm fatigue, where nurses tend to do inappropriatactions to silence the alarms or adjust them outside the appropriate limits. Thus, this study aims to explore stresand alarm fatigue among staff nurses dealing with critically ill patients. A cross-sectional study was conducted amon114 nurses dealing with critically ill patients (ICU/CCU/HDU/NICU, and A&E) in a private hospital in Kuala LumpuUsing purposive sampling, participants who met inclusion and exclusion criteria were asked to fill up a questionnairconsisting of sociodemographic data, a nursing stress scale, and an alarm fatigue questionnaire. After 30 minutethe questionnaire was collected. Most nurses dealing with critically ill patients reported a low level of stress (65.8%and alarm fatigue (69.3%). Based on study findings, subscale workload was identified as the primary source ostress (Mean = 2.516, SD = 0.484). Meanwhile, education level and working shift are the only sociodemographicharacteristics associated with stress and alarm fatigue (p < 0.05). However, no significant correlation was seebetween stress and alarm fatigue, and this revealed a weak correlation between these two variables (r = 0.078, = 0.411). Stress and alarm fatigue was found statistically not significant towards each other. Future studies shoulexplore different risk factors associated with alarm fatigue among nurses dealing with critically ill patients. © 2023, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya. All rights reserved.