Alarm Management in Provisional COVID-19 Intensive Care Units: Retrospective Analysis and Recommendations for Future Pandemics

Background: In response to the high patient admission rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, provisional intensive care units (ICUs) were set up, equipped with temporary monitoring and alarm systems. We sought to find out whether the provisional ICU setting led to a higher alarm burden and more staff with alarm fatigue. Objective: We aimed to compare alarm situations between provisional COVID-19 ICUs and non–COVID-19 ICUs during the second COVID-19 wave in Berlin, Germany. The study focused on measuring alarms per bed per day, identifying medical devices with higher alarm frequencies in COVID-19 settings, evaluating the median duration of alarms in both types of ICUs, and assessing the level of alarm fatigue experienced by health care staff. Methods: Our approach involved a comparative analysis of alarm data from 2 provisional COVID-19 ICUs and 2 standard non–COVID-19 ICUs. Through interviews with medical experts, we formulated hypotheses about potential differences in alarm load, alarm duration, alarm types, and staff alarm fatigue between the 2 ICU types. We analyzed alarm log data from the patient monitoring systems of all 4 ICUs to inferentially assess the differences. In addition, we assessed staff alarm fatigue with a questionnaire, aiming to comprehensively understand the impact of the alarm situation on health care personnel. Results: COVID-19 ICUs had significantly more alarms per bed per day than non–COVID-19 ICUs (P<.001), and the majority of the staff lacked experience with the alarm system. The overall median alarm duration was similar in both ICU types. We found no COVID-19–specific alarm patterns. The alarm fatigue questionnaire results suggest that staff in both types of ICUs experienced alarm fatigue. However, physicians and nurses who were working in COVID-19 ICUs reported a significantly higher level of alarm fatigue (P=.04). Conclusions: Staff in COVID-19 ICUs were exposed to a higher alarm load, and the majority lacked experience with alarm management and the alarm system. We recommend training and educating ICU staff in alarm management, emphasizing the importance of alarm management training as part of the preparations for future pandemics. However, the limitations of our study design and the specific pandemic conditions warrant further studies to confirm these findings and to explore effective alarm management strategies in different ICU settings.