Innovative Techniques for Reducing Nurses' Alert Fatigue

Purpose: This project aimed to reduce pop-up alerts frequency and enhance alert relevance, thus minimizing alert fatigue, enhancing patient safety, improving nurse satisfaction, and optimizing workflow.

Background/significance: Alert fatigue, caused by pop-up alerts in electronic health records, poses a significant challenge for nurses, impacting workflow and care quality. To combat this problem, our team initiated a focused review of pop-up alerts to improve their efficiency and eliminate or reduce unnecessary interruptions for nursing staff.

Methods: A comprehensive review of inpatient pop-up alerts was conducted, including an assessment of the alerts most frequently triggered on nurses’ screens, the resulting actions taken by the nurse, and feedback from nurses about individual pop-ups. A subcommittee was formed, including IT analysts and the informatics team, to evaluate the necessity and relevance of each pop-up alert, implementing adjustments, improvements, or removal where appropriate. Data on pop-up firing rates and action taken were collected before and after the intervention to assess impact.

Population: The workgroup analyzed the firing frequency and subsequent action taken on the 40 existing inpatient interruptive pop-ups for nurses, focusing on the most frequently firing pop-ups to start. For the 90 days prior to making any changes, the inpatient pop-up alerts of focus fired 170,554 times.

Results: Preliminary data indicate a promising increase in action taken from pop-up triggers, with a measurable decrease in less meaningful pop-up firing rates post-implementation. A significant decrease in pop-up alerts (58.72%) was noted, 90 days post-implementation. This reduction in pop-ups and increase in action taken aligns with our project goals and underscores the potential for optimized alert systems to alleviate alert fatigue.

Conclusion: Optimizing pop-ups through targeted adjustments and adherence to best practices effectively reduces less meaningful interruptions, potentially reducing alert fatigue among nurses. This approach supports the goal of enhancing the well-being of nursing staff and patient safety by streamlining alert systems and enhancing workflow efficiency. This project is ongoing.