A nurses' alarm fatigue questionnaire: development and psychometric properties

Alarm fatigue can adversely affect nurses' efficiency and concentration on their tasks, which is a threat to patients' safety. The purpose of the present study was to develop and test the psychometric accuracy of an alarm fatigue questionnaire for nurses. This study was conducted in two stages: in stage one, in order to establish the different aspects of the concept of alarm fatigue, the researchers reviewed the available literature-articles and books-on alarm fatigue, and then consulted several experts in a meeting to define alarm fatigue and develop statements for the questionnaire. In stage two, after the final draft had been approved, the validity of the instrument was measured using the two methods of face validity (the quantitative and qualitative approaches) and content validity (the qualitative and quantitative approaches). Test-retest, Cronbach's alpha, and Principal Component Analysis were used for item reduction and reliability analysis. Based on the results of stage one, the researchers extracted 30 statements based on a 5-point Likert scale. In stage two, after the face and content validity of the questionnaire had been established, 19 statements were left in the instrument. Based on factor loadings of the items and "alpha if item deleted" and after the second round of consultation with the expert panel, six items were removed from the scale. The test of the reliability of nurses' alarm fatigue questionnaire based on the internal homogeneity and retest methods yielded the following results: test-retest correlation coefficient = 0.99; Guttman split-half correlation coefficient = 0.79; Cronbach's alpha = 0.91. Regarding the importance of recognizing alarm fatigue in nurses, there is need for an instrument to measure the phenomenon. The results of the study show that the developed questionnaire is valid and reliable enough for measuring alarm fatigue in nurses.