Semipractical alarms: A parable

Abstract

Current alarms protect the manufacturers of medical equipment from liability but do little to improve the quality of patient care. Existing alarms are so intrusive that the response of the anesthesiologist and others in the operating room is to want the offensive noise to go away, rather than to address potentially life-threatening situations. Alarms need to be refined so that only those whose attention is required (e.g., the anesthesiologist) are disturbed. It should always be immediately clear which particular variable is outside accepted limits, and alarms for different variables should operate independently so that if one alarm fails, others will still work.