From Fatigue to Focus: Improving the Effectiveness of Environmental Monitoring Alarms

Alarm fatigue happens when people become desensitized to alarms and potential safety threats, causing slower responses or missed alerts. Ignoring your 6.00 am alarm might result in you getting stuck in traffic or arriving late to the office; but getting desensitized and missing an alarm in your storage or warehouse might result in millions in product loss, regulatory noncompliance, or compromised safety.

What Causes Alarm Fatigue?

Alarm fatigue happens for several reasons. Understanding these is necessary for implementing relief strategies.

These are some of the more recurrent causes of alarm fatigue:

• Excessive Number of Alarms: Continuous environmental monitoring systems are designed to send immediate or delayed alerts when supervised parameters such as CO2, temperature, or humidity deviate from their defined thresholds. If the number of alerts is too high, it can overwhelm the staff, leading to desensitization. Remember, when everything seems important, nothing seems important, and oversight is lost.
• False Alarms: These false alarms can result from equipment issues. Instruments that are poorly maintained or that haven’t been calibrated properly or regularly could generate false alarms, leading to alarm desensitization to real-time monitoring alerts.
• Improper training: Environmental monitoring system alarms are important, but the responder team is the one acting on these alerts, so proper knowledge of SOPs is imperative. Improper training translates into delayed actions, responder freeze, or hesitation, a lack of understanding of how to prioritize alarms, or even incorrect actions that can worsen the situation.
• Inadequately defined thresholds: When parameters aren’t properly set, the environmental monitoring system generates alerts for minor or non-critical fluctuations. If left unsupervised, the huge number of unimportant or premature alerts can easily desensitize the responder, causing alarm fatigue.
• Lack of team communication: When roles and responsibilities are not clear or key information isn’t shared efficiently, responders might duplicate actions, miss alerts, or fail to act coordinately. Deficient communication can lead to slower responses, increasing stress and workload on individual responders, and reducing the effectiveness of alarm management strategies.

Luckily, these are preventable with the implementation of easy strategies.

Alarm management is critical to maintaining the focus of team responders so they can act confidently and appropriately. By implementing a few simple actions, alarm fatigue can be prevented.

• Optimize Thresholds Settings: Adjust alarm thresholds to reduce non-critical fluctuations to reduce unnecessary alarms that can lead to alarm desensitization.
• Hold Regular Team Meetings: Regular status meetings are a great opportunity to review alarm management procedures and discuss recurring issues. This is also the opportunity for team responders to raise any issues, doubts, or questions they might have.
• Provide Regular Training and Refreshers: Keeping a schedule of regular training or refreshers is the best option to ensure the team of responders is well prepared and familiar with SOPs, alarm prioritization, and role clarity.
• Properly Maintain Your Equipment: Avoid false alarms or excessive alerts by maintaining a calibration schedule of your equipment.
• Simplify Processes with Low-Tech Solutions: Very simple things like visual reminders and cues (e.g. to close doors), cheat sheets, or checklists are easy to implement, low-cost, and high-reward solutions.
• Leverage Technology: Using a comprehensive continuous environmental monitoring software is an effective way to address multiple alarm-fatigue factors simultaneously.

Addressing the causes of alarm fatigue in a comprehensive way involves more than just strategies: it calls for the right tool. Our EMSuite software offers a suite of advanced features designed to streamline alarm management, improve team response, and safeguard compliance.

Key features that will prevent alarm fatigue, taking your alarm management to the next level:

• Customizable Alarm Parameters: Define thresholds for critical deviations and avoid alerts for non-critical fluctuations, minimizing unnecessary alarms, allowing staff to focus on what matters.
• Real-Time Notifications Across Channels: Stay connected with instant alerts via mobile app, SMS, or email, ensuring alarms reach the right team members wherever they are.
• Interactive Data Insights: With quick access to comprehensive data, including custom reports, graphs, and plan views you’ll be able to analyze alarm trends and identify and address recurring issues.
• Action Cards for Step-by-Step Guidance: Translate your SOPs into actionable, traceable steps with EMSuite’s Action Cards, enabling your team to respond efficiently to any alarms.
• Scalable and Flexible Solutions: Expand and reconfigure your monitoring system with ease. EMSuite supports growing facilities and ensures seamless system integration across multiple sites.
• Reliable Support: With Ellab, you have access to ongoing remote and on-site support, calibration, and validation services. Maintain optimal accuracy and compliance with expert assistance tailored to your needs.

By integrating our continuous environmental monitoring solutions into your monitoring and response strategy, you are not only avoiding alarm fatigue, but you are also protecting your assets, staying compliant, and improving your operational efficiency.