Which statement best describes a strategy to mitigate alert fatigue in clinical decision support?

• A. Increase the number of alerts.
• B. Prioritize critical alerts, refine thresholds, and customize user settings.
• C. Disable all alerts.
• D. Apply the same alert settings to all users.

Answer: (B)

Mitigating alert fatigue hinges on delivering only meaningful, prioritized decision-support alerts. The best strategy is to prioritize critical alerts, refine thresholds, and customize user settings. By focusing on high-value alerts that truly require action, you reduce interruptions from routine or low-risk notifications and keep attention where it matters most. Refining thresholds ensures alerts fire only when patient risk is genuinely clinically relevant, preventing a flood of nuisance alerts that desensitize clinicians. Customizing settings by role, specialty, or even individual user aligns alerts with actual workflows and patient populations, so the right people see the right alerts at the right time without overloading them. Together, these steps preserve safety while improving the likelihood that important warnings are noticed and acted upon.

Increasing the number of alerts would add noise and worsen fatigue. Disabling all alerts removes essential safety checks. Applying the same alert settings to all users ignores differences in practice and patient needs, leading to unnecessary interruptions for some and missed relevance for others.