Better Alarms, Better Patients ... Papa John's

When thinking of adjectives to describe a hospital, "quiet" would be very, very far from the top of the list. In fact, you'd struggle to think of a less-fitting word when it comes to the sonic chaos hospitals bring. And at the top of the noise pollution list are the literal legion of alarms doctors and nurses are subject to.

It does make sense, having so many alarms. Patients aren't admitted to hospitals lightly, and they do need to be monitored. If something unexpected happens, doctors and nurses need to know right away. But in the typical U.S. hospital, auditory alarms can go off up to 300 times per day per patient, and that is firmly in the realm of "make them stop" or "the beeping haunts my every waking moment." Patients have alarms for everything, including alarms to tell doctors that a different alarm was turned off or not reset.

This isn't just a matter of annoyance either; the Food and Drug Administration estimates that an average of about 100 deaths a year can be linked to alarm fatigue. This leaves hospitals with a bit of a dilemma: The alarms are all necessary, but only a few require immediate action. So, how can you differentiate crucial alarms from not-so-crucial ones, and how can you do it without driving doctors and patients to insanity and/or indifference?

The answer, according to a recent study, is to make alarms sound a bit more musical. The study researchers played a group of volunteers a sequence of notes with varying timbres (timbre is what makes instruments, voices, etc. sound different from each other, even if playing the same note); the volunteers were then asked to rank the alarms based on how annoying they found them. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the alarms which were least annoying were percussive in nature, with complex harmonies: The ping of a xylophone, specifically, over the monotonous beeping of a machine. Alarms based on the sounds of the triangle also represent a future area of study, the researchers said, as the triangle is quite famous for standing out in the crowd, audible even in a vast orchestra courtesy of its complex overtones.

Who knows, perhaps one day hospitals will become filled with music, a far cry from the feverish beeping and harsh alarms we know today. Just watch out for when a 4/4 string ostinado in D minor plays. Every sailor knows that means death.