Auditory Alarms In The Intensive Care Unit: Experimental And Observational Studies
type: CreativeWork
description: There are many problems associated with the number of auditory warnings in hospital environments such as the Intensive Care Unit. As the amount of medical technology used to monitor a patient's condition increases, there is a concomitant increase in the number of auditory warnings. Each piece of equipment has its own alarm and often the sounds used are inappropriate. For example, the sounds are often too loud, too insistent and are irritating to staff, distracting them from other tasks. A further feature of sounds used for auditory alarms is that there is, at present, no agreement between manufacturers on the types of sounds used. This means that the same item of equipment can have different alarms if produced by different manufacturers. Subsequently there is the potential for confusion between alarms to occur if sounds are similar. The research presented in this thesis aims to investigate the psychological dimension of confusion between alarm sounds and the correct identification of a set of twelve auditory warnings currently in use in the I.C.U. Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Hence, the first set of experiments examines the learning and retention of the set of auditory warnings in a laboratory setting. However, the many problems regarding auditory warnings should not be considered in isolation and in order to determine the types of activities undertaken by staff in the I.C.U. environment when alarms are activated, two observational studies were undertaken. The first study used a video camera and the second study involved direct observation using two observers. A series of tasks were developed that used the multiple resources literature as a framework and also represented tasks undertaken in the environment of the I.C.U. In the second experiment, participants were again required to learn and retain the set of auditory warnings. The tasks were introduced during the return stage of the experiment in order to examine first, whether there was an effect on the primary ta…
abstract: There are many problems associated with the number of auditory warnings in hospital environments such as the Intensive Care Unit. As the amount of medical technology used to monitor a patient's condition increases, there is a concomitant increase in the number of auditory warnings. Each piece of equipment has its own alarm and often the sounds used are inappropriate. For example, the sounds are often too loud, too insistent and are irritating to staff, distracting them from other tasks. A further feature of sounds used for auditory alarms is that there is, at present, no agreement between manufacturers on the types of sounds used. This means that the same item of equipment can have different alarms if produced by different manufacturers. Subsequently there is the potential for confusion between alarms to occur if sounds are similar. The research presented in this thesis aims to investigate the psychological dimension of confusion between alarm sounds and the correct identification of a set of twelve auditory warnings currently in use in the I.C.U. Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Hence, the first set of experiments examines the learning and retention of the set of auditory warnings in a laboratory setting. However, the many problems regarding auditory warnings should not be considered in isolation and in order to determine the types of activities undertaken by staff in the I.C.U. environment when alarms are activated, two observational studies were undertaken. The first study used a video camera and the second study involved direct observation using two observers. A series of tasks were developed that used the multiple resources literature as a framework and also represented tasks undertaken in the environment of the I.C.U. In the second experiment, participants were again required to learn and retain the set of auditory warnings. The tasks were introduced during the return stage of the experiment in order to examine first, whether there was an effect on the primary ta…
author: MEREDITH, CHRISTINA
language: eng
date published: 1995-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:50:32Z
provider: University of Plymouth
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Plymouth