Alarm Fatigue

Alarm fatigue is a well-recognized and well-studied phenomenon, cause by the widespread adoption of digital monitoring technologies.

But there is a blind spot in the studies of alarm fatigue. What does it look like from the patient’s point of view?

I recently had two stints in the hospital, and they were the opposite of fun. Here are some of the lowlights:

• that damn pulse monitor on your finger – the one needing an attendant to remove so you can go pee
• a blood pressure cuff that inflates whenever you go to sleep
• frequent visits from nurses to check whatever doo-dad is wired to your chest with little sticky pads, pads that no one thinks to clean off occasionally. It took two days of showers to get all the rubber cement off
• gratuitous chatter from officious nurses. One night nurse treated me to amateur diagnoses based on that doo-dad with all the wires. Sir, you are not a medical doctor, nor should you play one on TV. Certainly you have seen cases similar to mine. Nevertheless, this is not the time nor occasion to share; I lie in a tortuously uncomfortable hospital bed, contemplating my mortality at the edge of rationality. STFU.