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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1345396
This article is part of the Research Topic The Interplay of Stress, Health, and Well-being: Unraveling the Psychological and Physiological Processes - Volume II View all 7 articles

Alarm fatigue and sleep quality in medical staff -a Polish-Czech-Slovak study on workplace ergonomics

Provisionally accepted
Łukasz Rypicz Łukasz Rypicz 1*Izabela Witczak Izabela Witczak 1Maria Supinova Maria Supinova 2Hugh P. Salehi Hugh P. Salehi 3Oľga Jarabicová Oľga Jarabicová 4
  • 1 Wroclaw Medical University, Wrocław, Poland
  • 2 Slovak Medical University, Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia
  • 3 Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, United States
  • 4 Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Labem, Czechia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Alarms are crucial in informing Healthcare Workers (HCWs) about critical patient needs, but unmanaged frequency and noise of alarms can de-sensitize medical staff and compromise patient safety. Alarm fatigue is identified as the major cause of the clinical alarm management problem. It occurs when the medical staff is overwhelmed by the number of clinical alarms.The survey was conducted online using Google's form-making tools from June to July 2023. There were three parts to the survey used in the study: a socio-demographic metric, the Alarm Fatigue Assessment Questionnaire (AFAQ), and The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). A significance level of 0.05 was used in the analysis. Results: The survey included 756 medical professionals from three European countries (Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland). The participants in the study were 42 years old on average, and they had 12 years of work experience. 603 out of 756 survey participants had poor sleep quality, 147 had good sleep quality, and 6 didn't provide an answer. This study analyzed the alarm fatigue levels of respondents in every country. In the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, a statistically significant association (p=0.039, p=0.001, p<0.001) was found between alarm fatigue and sleep quality in medical staff. Conclusion: Medical device alarms have an effect on the sleep quality of medical personnel, so hospitals should keep monitor alarm fatigue to prevent its consequences.

    Keywords: alarm fatigue, Sleep, Healthcare worker, Well-being, Safety

    Received: 27 Nov 2023; Accepted: 22 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Rypicz, Witczak, Supinova, Salehi and Jarabicová. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Łukasz Rypicz, Wroclaw Medical University, Wrocław, Poland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.