This report originally appeared in the July 2010 issue of DOTmed Business News

As hospitals become more technologically advanced, technology-related hazards are on the rise. One hazard in particular has made headlines this year: monitor alarms. As monitors don more bells and whistles to keep tabs on patients' progress, and ironically, their safety, hospital personnel tends to tune out the incessant beeping and buzzing.

The Joint Commission found in its 2004 research that "occasionally, nurses put gauze over [monitor] speakers that are too loud and disturb patients who are sleeping," says George Mills, senior engineer of Joint Commission standards division. "Some older equipment is silenced until you turn it on. There's a problem where [staff] disable the alarm, and patient care is possibly put at risk, and it's just not good practice."

In January, a Massachusetts General Hospital patient died after his monitor alarm was left off by a hospital staff member. This event brought in the Joint Commission to investigate the situation. Mills speculates that after adverse incidents relating to monitor alarms, education about the importance of alarms goes up, but as time goes on and those staff members leave and new ones come in, people revert back to their old habits of turning alarms off or lowering their volume.

Monitor alarms consistently make the top 10 technology hazards list developed by the ECRI Institute, an organization that conducts research to investigate the best approaches to improve patient care from a patient safety perspective. The 2010 list has monitor alarms as the second-most hazardous device to patients.

"There are so many different types of devices and products that have alarms built into them that there are lots of opportunities for failures to occur," says Jim Keller, ECRI's vice president of health technology evaluation and safety. "And they happen. [We] routinely see death associated with alarm problems."

The hazard with monitor alarms is nothing new, says Carol Davis-Smith, who sits on the Association of Medical Instrumentation's technology management council. Even when the issue seems resolved through education and inspection, it crops up again, she says.

But the technology of monitor alarms is moving forward. For example, one idea is to prohibit alarms from being turned off or lowered at the central station where alarms are heard. Or, the alarm can be silenced, but will turn back on after a brief period of time - similar to how an alarm clock snooze button works.

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