Too Many Beeps Create Alarm Fatigue

Too many beeping alarms in hospital rooms may be counterproductive. These devices measure patients’ vital signs and administer medications automatically. The beeps they emit are meant to alert hospital workers to a problem and trigger a quick response. But there are now so many such noise-makers in a patient’s room that health care workers suffer from alarm fatigue. The Joint Commission that accredits hospitals reports that ignoring such alarms leads to at least two dozen deaths of hospitalized patients in the U.S. every year. This may be a significant underestimate.
Alert fatigue has been shown to cause problems when doctors are writing computerized prescriptions or when pharmacists are filling them. It may also lead to abnormal test results being overlooked. Computerized warnings about dangerous drug interactions are frequently ignored or deliberately overridden. This fatigue phenomenon has been known for thousands of years, at least since Aesop wrote the famous fable about the boy who cried wolf. Clearly, alerts should represent real harm and get prompt action.