Hospitals battle 'alarm fatigue'

Hospital alarms help keep patients alive, but most of the unrelenting noise signals nothing of concern. Besides being a nuisance, too many false alarms can mean that nurses begin to tune them out. Hospital administrators know the concept as "alarm fatigue," and they increasingly are recognizing that it can lead to serious problems. The Joint Commission, an independent organization that accredits hospitals, issued an alert last year about alarm fatigue, pointing to 80 alarm-related deaths between January 2009 and June 2012. The good news: Once you give some serious thought to how you use monitors, it's possible to cut false alarms significantly and give nurses (and their patients) more peace and quiet.