To Reduce Hospital Noise, Researchers Create Alarms That Whistle and Sing

Less important, but such sounds are everywhere they don’t need to be, and it has always made me wonder how others hear them. I don’t buy appliances unless I can turn the alarm sounds off (even hack them off somehow). It was only when I lived in a least developed country and had a washing machine that played a cheerful tune at the end of every load that I fully realized how insane and unnecessary all the angry beeps are—though even alarm clocks had mystified me in childhood. I am sure I would be miserably stressed in a hospital for this reason alone.

As someone who has spent time in emergency rooms, ICU, and general hospital wards in recent years, I am so happy to see this issue addressed. The incessant beeps, most of which are ignored by staff, only serve to increase one’s stress level at a difficult time, and make it harder to relax and sleep, in between the frequent rousings for having one’s vital signs checked and tests. Hospitals are clearly set up for the convenience of the medical staff, not for the well being of the patients. It is good to see some movement in the right direction.

Why do MRI’s have all of the tones that they do? Are the sounds really necessary to their functions?

I am frequently the over night visitor for family and friends when they are I'll. I am a medical professional. I can't tell you the amount of alarms that are critical are ignored. I think the staff is immune to them. I wonder how many people died because they didn't have someone to flag down help. I won't even mention unanswered call requests.

I stayed in a Japanese hospital where the nurse call sounds at the desk came in as a musical tune, a fairly standard circus-type ditty. Yes, it may have been better than a ding-dong sound, but it was a fairly common song, and whenever I hear it now I shiver.

Lovely idea, but how's about improving staffing levels so that nurses can better monitor, appropriately set, and quickly respond to alarms? They only ding incessantly when there is no one there to respond to them.

I was hospitalized for 5 days post surgery at Mount Sinai Beth Israel after I had lung surgery. The amount of noise the staff would make in the middle of the night was shocking. Banging trash cans talking and laughing loudly. At one point I yelled from my bed to please “Shut Up!” It’s incredible how little thought is given to peace and quiet for patients recovering in hospital wards.

How’s this? Rock&Roll music is the answer! Drug Delivery: “(High) With a Little Help From My Friends” Ventilation: “Just Breathe” Artificial Perfusion: “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing Through)”

Utter rubbish. The problem is noise, not whether it it is pleasant chirps or unpleasant bleats. The author is solving the wrong problem.

If the alarms aren’t loud, how do hospitals ensure that the patients can’t sleep all night?

Sign me up if they need a someone for a focus group. Not only have I worked in hospitals and critical care medicine, I've also stayed a total of 3 weeks in the ICU almost all day at various times due to relatives' illness. These rooms had sofa beds or reclining chairs where a family member could stay over if need be and knowing how things can fall through the cracks and having the flexibility to do so, I stayed all day and over night. The worst were the sounds coming from supposedly kinked IV lines or finished infusions. Probably half the time, nothing was really wrong. The ironic thing was the ICU rooms were enclosed in glass and I'm not even sure the nurses heard the sounds that well. They would beep and wake me up from sleep. It was much worse for my relatives who were trying to recover. Occasionally, I would wander over to the nurses station or call them into the room to handle the devices. Later, interestingly and unconnected to my stay in those hospitals, I was randomly selected by a medical journal to peer review an article on quality of care during hospitalization and you can bet I made my thoughts known.

Thank you for finally trying to address the issues that make hospitals real torture chambers. After spending a few days in in a hospital i feel completely exhausted by sleep deprivation (constant buzzing of hospital equipment, (un)necessary tests that can happen at any time during the night), untrained staff that cannot perform basic tasks like blood draw without trying to stick you four or five times, etc.

I’m a retired physician. The most disturbing thing about those annoying hospital machines is that the medical staff know very little about how the machines work and what the sounds are intended to convey. How many times I’ve been told to just ignore the alarm because the staff didn’t know how to turn it off or that the alarm didn’t mean anything anyway. It’s not necessary for every heart beat, drop of fluid, mattress inflation to produce sounds and flashes.

Put the buzzers on the doctors and nurses so that they can feel them and leave the sounds out of the hospital. (What inconvenience them, not the patients???? Yup.)

Brrr...some of these sounds need work. I worked in hospital on different wards and have always liked the different beeps the machines make...to me they are calming as I know they work / or do not work...and a steady "bleep" is a great white noise. But I understand that patients and visitors dislike the sounds as they are not used to it. These beeps should be confined to the nurses central station and the physician's workrooms, with only the most critical sounds playing over the speakers. Patients should be provided with earplugs and eyeshades or bring their own to minimize disturbance from any activity around them. My fellow staff should also learn to adjust the individual patient's monitor to the alarm levels suitable to the particular patient. This greatly reduces noise.

Medical offices, hospital rooms and waiting rooms could begin by turning off the din of multiple commercial TV's, sometimes hung next to cute sayings about the healing qualities of silence!

How about just screaming “help I’m dying, (The missing leg, arm, foot, head”) is killing me?

What drove me crazy when I was recovering from septic shock in CCU and unable to talk, was the sound of shoes. Employees not necessarily nurses, would wear hard shoes with a hard heal. Walking on a tiled floor I would be awakened by click click click click click click as an administrator or some non-medical person walked through the CCU. I remember one Dr wore cowboy boots. I was intubated and aware but couldn’t say anything to anybody, but it certainly woke me up during the small amount of time that I could sleep. Once decisions are made about the right beeps or bops for these machines, can you remind the employees who work in hospitals and walk in the units to wear soft soled shoes? It’s not a fashion show where people judge foot attire.

How well will condition- or treatment-related ring tones work where someone is tone-deaf?

The other day I washed my hands in the restroom of a local grocery store. The foaming soap they used smelled just like the soap in my hospital room after my leg was amputated a few years ago. As I washed my hands, my thoughts drifted back to those events...and no-doubt affected what I bought that day. I suspect that annunciator sounds on medical devices would do the same thing. Perhaps the custom 'ring tones' suggested by this article would prevent any flashback to a hospital visit. I am reminded of how ethyl mercaptan, the chemical odorant added to propane and natural gas to make smell the way it does, is another unique alarm signal that we all recognize.

super interesting and needed all over the world not just hospitals. i live in a place with golf carts constantly backing up (no i don’t live on a golf course), and the “beep-beep-beep” of a backup alarm will drive you crazy if it’s heard all day, every 10-15 minutes. all alarms should get this kind of attention, but it seems right to start in a hospital, where patients can feel somewhat trapped to varying degrees. it’s also interesting that it was a musician that brought about this change, after a stint in the hospital, listening to the sounds. i’m a musician too, and i’m extremely sensitive to alarms and other sounds like this, which explains why the golf cart backing up sound bothers me, while other non-musicians that live in the building with me don’t seems to notice it as much. anyway, cool article!

It's turning care into an engine room. A skilled engineer on a ship can monitor the health of the equipment with his or her ears. If a generator trips off line, the sound alone can spur the engineer into action before any voltage alarms sound. Alarms are superfluous. You become tuned to the sounds. This is an engineered approach that taps into human skill of pattern detection. Not only for the patient, but for the care givers. You aren't beholden to pre-set generic alarm limits, your intuition can notice the change before the danger line is crossed.

Wonderful. I sincerely hope it's embraced and utilized.But there is more to be done. After a recent one week stay in cardiology in NYC, it was the night nurses and assorted support workers yelling to each other, from room to room and down long corridors to communicate that drove me crazy and made sleep impossible.

THANK YOU. What a wonderful thing. It seems to be part of a growing movement to make the world a little more quiet.

I'm not a doctor or any medical person but I've spent my share of time in hospitals with my father and my husband both of whom passed about a year apart from each other. And each had spent lengthy stays in the hospital. These noises are sounding 24/7 and are all around you. It is disturbing in that it makes you feel your loved one is constantly in danger. It is anything but calming. I think this solution is genius. I actually think it would help the health outcome, too. Or, at least, make the patient feel more secure and comfortable. I hope it's put in to place ASAP.

As a designer, I get emotional when reading pieces like this one. Intentional design can and should be everywhere, in object, spaces, processes. Sometimes people think that a designer makes pretty things but here we have a great example of how design is really much deeper than that. It can be a matter of life and death and it is about empathy towards users. It can and should hide in the most subtle of places, like the orchestration of hospital sounds. Thanks for a great and inspiring article!