Author Interviews, Health Care Systems, Sleep Disorders / 16.02.2023

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael R. Schutz, Ph.D. Professor of Music Cognition/Percussion at McMaster University Founding director of the MAPLE Lab and Core member of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind. Prof. Schutz is also a professional musician and directs McMaster’s percussion ensemble.   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Hospitals around the world are filled with devices generating aconstant stream of tones conveying information to medical staff.overburdened healthcare professionals, and contributes to burnout inmedical staff.  The Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) regularlyincludes problems with auditory alarms in their list of "Top 10 HealthTechnology Hazards" and they  are so problematic an FDA surveyimplicated them in hundreds of patient deaths.While there is currently a lot of interest in how to improve alarmmanagement protocols, this study is different in that it looks atimproving the quality of the alarm sounds themselves.  For historicalreasons many default to simplistic "beeps" which are generallyannoying.  While annoying is useful for critical alarms requiringimmediate action, the vast majority of these messages are merelyintended to update medical staff of changes (i.e. blood pressure isrising) or indicate other situations that do not require immediateaction. Unfortunately, many machines use the same simplistic andannoying "beeps" regardless of whether the messages are urgent ornon-urgent.  This constant flood of annoying beeps negatively affectsboth patients (extending recovery time due to interrupted rest) andstaff (who can develop "alarm fatigue" from the constant cacophony). (more…)
Author Interviews, Outcomes & Safety, UCSF / 23.10.2014

Barbara J. Drew, RN, PhD, FAAN, FAHA David Mortara Distinguished Professor in Physiological Nursing Research Clinical Professor of Medicine, Cardiology University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Physiological Nursing San Francisco, CA 94143-0610 MedicalResearch.com: Interview Barbara J. Drew, RN, PhD, FAAN, FAHA David Mortara Distinguished Professor in Physiological Nursing Research, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Cardiology University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Physiological Nursing San Francisco, CA 94143-0610 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Drew: Physiologic monitors used in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) are plagued with alarms that create a cacophony of sounds and visual alerts causing “alarm fatigue.” Alarm fatigue occurs when clinicians are desensitized by numerous alarms, many of which are false or clinically irrelevant. As a result, the cacophony of alarm sounds becomes “background noise” that is perceived as the normal working environment in the ICU. Importantly, alarms may be silenced at the central station without checking the patient or permanently disabled by clinicians who find the constant audible or textual messages bothersome. Disabling alarms creates an unsafe patient environment because a life-threatening event may be missed in this milieu of sensory overload. To date, there has not been a comprehensive investigation of the frequency, types, and accuracy of physiologic monitor alarms collected in a “real-world” ICU setting. For this reason, nurse and engineer scientists in the ECG Monitoring Research Laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) designed a study to provide complete data on monitor alarms. (more…)