QUIET
Care: A Nursing‐Led Conceptual Analysis of Alarm‐Related Acoustic Burden in Adult Critical Care
Abdalkarem Fedgash Alsharari, Mostafa Shaban ABSTRACT
Background
Adult intensive care units (ICUs) generate a persistent acoustic burden from alarms, care activity, equipment and communication. This burden can undermine patient rest and contribute to alarm fatigue, cognitive workload and distress among nurses.
Aim
To present a nursing‐led conceptual framework for addressing alarm‐related acoustic burden in adult critical care.
Study Design
Literature‐informed conceptual analysis. A structured purposive evidence map was audited using two PubMed searches run on 9 September 2026 (3377 unique records after PMID deduplication) and citation checking. Twenty‐nine selected sources were charted against the five domains. This was not a systematic review; no original data, formal consensus or framework validation was undertaken.
Results
QUIET Care proposes five connected practice domains: quantify and qualify the sound environment; use patient‐specific monitoring and alarms; integrate quiet into workflow; engage people and culture; and track, test and learn. It treats the domains as locally adaptable hypotheses and requires explicit safety balancing measures.
Conclusions
QUIET Care is a pragmatic proposal for local co‐design and evaluation, not a validated intervention or universal sound target.
Relevance to Clinical Practice
The framework may help critical care nurses and leaders organise source mapping, alarm customisation, workflow redesign, team ownership and small safety‐monitored tests of change while preserving the audibility of urgent alerts.