Reduce alarm fatigue to prevent burnout in nursing

Breaking the Cycle of Burnout: Smarter Alarm Management for Better Care

Too many nurses know the feeling: constant exhaustion, emotional withdrawal, and disillusionment towards the job you once loved. While nurses don’t go into healthcare because it’s easy, everyday tiredness and job stress can gradually evolve into something more serious. And over time, the passion that brought nurses into healthcare can feel crushed by burnout. 

According to the annual “Beyond the Bedside: The State of Nursing in 2025” survey, 65% of nurses are experiencing stress and burnout and only 60% would choose nursing as their career again. ¹ Burnout can affect professionals in any industry and is the result of chronic workplace stress that goes unmanaged. Recently labeled as an official medical diagnosis by the World Health Organization, burnout symptoms include increased mental distance, cynicism related to one’s job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.² When a healthcare provider has reached the point of burnout, the effects can be felt far across the care continuum. Tired and overworked nurses are more likely to make mistakes at work and risk patient safety.³  

Severe burnout doesn’t just impact patient care; it can drive nurses out of the workforce entirely. When staffing levels drop, remaining nurses face longer shifts and heavier patient loads. Research shows that nurse-to-patient ratios above 1:4 are linked to higher hospital mortality rates and a greater risk of infections and injuries.⁴  To fill the gap, many organizations turn to agency nurses, but this solution often comes at a premium, increasing labor costs significantly.  

Understanding the Causes of Nurse Burnout 

Healthcare leaders looking to curb nurse burnout within their organizations must address the underlying causes that negatively impact job satisfaction and nurses’ mental health, outlined below. 

1. Nursing shortages and long work hours   

Nearly 40% of the nursing workforce is expected to retire in the next five years, a rate that nursing schools are not projected to keep up with.⁵  Turnover rates among nursing professionals are also high, ranging between 5.2% to 36.4% depending on geographic location, organization size, and nursing specialty.⁶  The combination of these two metrics has raised alarms across the country for an impending nursing labor shortage. With more nursing jobs open than any other industry in the US last year, hospitals and clinics across the country are feeling the strain and have put in place mandatory overtime policies in an effort to shore up staffing shortages.⁷ While this practice serves as a temporary solution, it can have serious consequences. Nurses who regularly work 12-hour shifts are at greater risk for burnout, distress, severe fatigue, and poor work-life integration.⁸   

2. Heavy workloads   

With rising demand for nurses, increasing patient-to-nurse ratios, and growing expectations to provide higher levels of care, today’s nurses face heavier workloads than ever before.⁹  Many don’t have enough time to complete all their tasks, which can lead to frustration and, ultimately, a decline in the quality of care delivered.   

3. Inefficient workflows   

Inefficient communication processes between nurses and care teams adds unnecessary stress, making collaboration harder, reducing job satisfaction, and even putting patient safety at risk. For instance, nurses often have to physically track down colleagues or play rounds of phone tag in order to coordinate care. Every minute wasted is time taken away from patients. When nurses can devote more time to their patients, care becomes more personal, patient outcomes improve, and job satisfaction rises.¹⁰  

4. Emotional exhaustion  

Although nurses enter the profession knowing they’ll care for sick, injured, and even dying patients, the emotional toll of that work is profound.  Nurses often build close relationships with patients throughout the care continuum, which makes the weight of illness and loss even heavier. It’s no surprise that they report higher rates of acute stress, depression, and anxiety than their physician counterparts.¹¹  

5. Excessive cognitive shifting   

Nurses are interrupted by many alarms, alerts, and notifications from multiple devices throughout their workday and are often the first to be impacted by inefficient alarm management workflows. Proper alarm management aims to limit these interruptions.   

Oftentimes, patient monitor alarms are sent out to every caregiver instead of just those assigned to the patient. This constant flood of alarms forces nurses to shift their attention hundreds of times a day, even if the alarm is irrelevant or non-actionable. Each interruption comes at a cost: research shows it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully refocus after being disrupted.¹² That’s time nurses could spend delivering care. 

6. Cognitive overload  

Cognitive overload in nursing happens when a nurse’s attention becomes so overwhelmed that they cannot maintain the situational awareness they need to respond appropriately to their patients. Cognitive overload affects nurses’ mental, physical, and emotional well-being and can lead to mistakes and oversights that hurt patient care.¹³  

7. Alarm Fatigue   

Similar to cognitive overload, alarm fatigue occurs when nurses are bombarded with countless alerts of varying importance. Over time, this constant stream of signals can desensitize clinicians to critical safety alarms, increasing the risk of missed warnings. Research shows that alarm fatigue doesn’t just compromise patient safety; it also heightens the risk of burnout and compassion fatigue, reducing nurses’ ability to empathize and provide nurturing care.¹⁴  

A study on alarm management found that the vast majority of clinical alarms, between 70-90%, are false alarms.¹⁵ In fact, most of the alarms nurses receive are non-actionable (only 5-13% of alarms require timely intervention), and many may not even be relevant to a nurse’s specific job function.¹⁶ 

How to reduce nurse burnout: streamline nurse workflows with smarter alarm management

Hospitals need alarm management technology that can filter out irrelevant alerts, route the relevant alerts to the appropriate caregivers, and enrich them with helpful, contextual information. By reducing alarm clutter and distributing the responsibility for following up on alerts, nurses can work with fewer interruptions and focus on patient care.  

The healthcare ecosystem simply could not run without the skilled care nurses provide. As the front lines of our hospitals, they deserve tools that improve their work environment and support them in delivering the best care possible.   

Simplifying your clinical workflows with a modern alarm management system reduces the cognitive burden on caregivers, meaning nurses can spend less time responding to irrelevant alarms and more time caring for patients. TigerConnect integrates with clinical systems such as nurse calls, physiological monitors, smart beds, and EHRs to intelligently route alarms to the appropriate caregiver’s mobile device. The FDA-cleared TigerConnect Alarm Management solution mitigates alarm fatigue by silencing unnecessary interruptions, delivering actionable notifications from the patient ecosystem directly to caregivers.  

To learn all the strategies to prevent burnout and reduce alarm fatigue in nursing, get the eBook: Nurses’ Ultimate Guide to Alarm Fatigue Interventions: Smarter Workflows Prevent Nurse Burnout. 

Learn more about Clinical Collaboration Software Platform, Resident Scheduling Software, Physician Scheduling Software, Alarm Management Software & Patient Engagement Software.