Rethinking Hospital Alarms
Acoustical Society of America (ASA)On average, there are about 480,000 patients in hospitals in the United States — each generating about 135 clinical alarms per day. But studies show that more than 90 percent of these alarms result in no action, and alarm errors occur roughly 8 million times per day. During the ASA 171st meeting, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, an acoustical consultant, will present a model that predicts how often alarm errors will occur based on several recent studies of hospital alarms.