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Comment by pdevine | Hacker News Reader

Go to a modern hospital emergency room, it's a cacophony of devices all vying for attention. I walked down the hallway and realized every room in the place had a different audible alarm—all active! I suspected the device manufacturers were all worried about liability for their device, making sure to notify that a patient had a problem. The end result for the medical staff was an endless chaos of noise. Complete systemic failure of UX from a practical standpoint.

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Yes. I have a family member that has had many hospital stays over the last few years, and one of the most obnoxious things is that the staff just lets everything beep. The last time we were in the emergency room the blood pressure monitor did not work and the staff didn't notice for over an hour. Even when it does work, they're constantly in an alarm state because patient has chronic high blood pressure. They either can't or won't silence the alarms, so every room is beeping, the nurse's station is beeping, their phones are beeping, and it's all being ignored. It's the very definition of alert fatigue.

In the regional hospital near me, they've begun actively fighting for fewer alarms. In part because they annoy everyone: patients, visitors, and hospital staff alike. But mostly because the inevitable alarm fatigue that the cacophony results in actively endangers patient safety.

The policy of this hospital is that all alarms, beeping, etc. should be disabled except in limited circumstances. Particularly at night.

From time in hospitals I've gotten very good at disabling them. Most nurses are fine with it but every now and then one would come on shift and tut tut at me for having done it. They usually shut up when I point out that they don't respond to the alarms in any sort of prompt way - as I'm sure if I were to continue pointing that out up their chain of command they would then find some trouble.

I always tell people though that being in the hospital doesn't make you healthier, mainly because you can't sleep. The hospital should be the absolute last resort, and your first priority on finding yourself in one should be to figure out how to get out of it, even if it involves nursing care at home.

And in my experience (not surprisingly) they have all developed a good sense of what alarms can be ignored, so like a pump beeping because it's done delivering some medicine doesn't matter so they ignore it and let it beep, but it matters to the parents with new baby trying to get some sleep.

When everything is urgent, nothing is urgent

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