Patient Alarms Often Fatally Ignored in Hospitals
A special investigation by the Boston Globe recently detailed an alarming problem. Patient monitor alarms help save lives by tracking heart functions, breathing, and other vital signs. But the report reveals that hospital workers frequently silence, turn off, or simply ignore the beeps, leading to hundreds of patient deaths.
It’s a troubling phenomenon known as “alarm fatigue.” With the use of monitors on the rise, frequent beeps can desensitize nurses who either ignore the warnings or fail to respond. In some cases, hospital staff misprogrammed complicated monitors or forgot to turn them on. Monitor alarm problems resulted in more than 200 deaths nationwide between January 2005 and June 2010.
John Hopkins is just one of the hospitals that the Globe analyzed in its report. Staff members documented an average of 942 alarms per day, which resulted in about one critical alarm every 90 seconds. Even high-crisis level alarms that are faster and more high-pitched were ignored.
To combat alarm fatigue and protect the safety of patients, some hospitals hired technicians to supervise monitors or installed speakers in hallways. But improvements are costly, and even special technicians are at risk of alarm fatigue