Designing an Alarm Fatigue Assessment Questionnaire: Evaluation of the Validity and Reliability of an Instrument

Abstract

Background In intensive care units (ICU), there should be some more facilities and equipment such as ventilators, monitors, suction pumps, etc. These devices are equipped with an alarm system in their settings. Sometimes, too many alarms cause alarm fatigue among nurses and consequently would jeopardize the safety of patients. Therefore, the current study aimed at designing a tool to assess the alarm fatigue among nurses.Methods In the current developmental, analytic study, using reliable databases, an alarm fatigue questionnaire was designed with 32 items. The content of the tool was measured by the panel of experts and its reliability was measured by Cronbach’s alpha. Data were analyzed with SPSS software version 21.Results The results showed that 9 out of 32 items of the questionnaire had low content validity index and ratio (CVI/CVR) and should be rejected; the index value of the questionnaire was 0.7 that was acceptable. The results showed that the final questionnaire was reliable (α = 0.806) with test-retest, which was repeatable.Conclusions Since the alarm fatigue can jeopardize the patients’ safety, it is required to use a reliable tool for its assessment. According to the obtained results in the current study, the present questionnaire had a relatively appropriate validity.