Melodic medical equipment alarms were exceptionally difficult for nurses to identify when overlapping, and concurrent mental tasks worsened response time but not accuracy.
How accurately and quickly can nurses identify melodic medical equipment alarms when no mnemonics are used, alarms overlap, and concurrent tasks are performed?
Melodic medical equipment alarms are poorly learned by nurses and cannot be discriminated when they overlap, highlighting the need for strict sequencing or redesign.
OBJECTIVE: We explore how accurately and quickly nurses can identify melodic medical equipment alarms when no mnemonics are used, when alarms may overlap, and when concurrent tasks are performed. BACKGROUND: The international standard IEC 60601-1-8 (International Electrotechnical Commission, 2005) has proposed simple melodies to distinguish seven alarm sources. Previous studies with nonmedical participants reveal poor learning of melodic alarms and persistent confusions between some of them. The effects of domain expertise, concurrent tasks, and alarm overlaps are unknown. METHOD: Fourteen intensive care and general medical unit nurses learned the melodic alarms without mnemonics in two sessions on separate days. In the second half of Day 2 the nurses identified single alarms or pairs of alarms played in sequential, partially overlapping, or nearly completely overlapping configurations. For half the experimental blocks nurses performed a concurrent mental arithmetic task. RESULTS: Nurses' learning was poor and was no better than the learning of nonnurses in a previous study. Nurses showed the previously noted confusions between alarms. Overlapping alarms were exceptionally difficult to identify. The concurrent task affected response time but not accuracy. CONCLUSION: Because of a failure of auditory stream segregation, the melodic alarms cannot be discriminated when they overlap. Directives to sequence the sounding of alarms in medical electrical equipment must be strictly adhered to, or the alarms must redesigned to support better auditory streaming. APPLICATION: Actual or potential uses of this research include the implementation of IEC 60601-1-8 alarms in medical electrical equipment.
Lacherez et al. (Sat,) conducted a other in Medical equipment alarm identification (n=14). Overlapping melodic alarms and concurrent mental arithmetic tasks vs. Single or sequential alarms without concurrent tasks was evaluated on Accuracy and response time in identifying melodic medical equipment alarms. Melodic medical equipment alarms were exceptionally difficult for nurses to identify when overlapping, and concurrent mental tasks worsened response time but not accuracy.
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