Acoustic Biotopes, Listeners and Sound-Induced Action: A Case Study of Operating Rooms.

As socio-technological environments shape and direct listener behaviour, an ecological account is needed that encompasses listening in complexity (i.e., multiple listeners, multiple sounds and their sources, and multiple sound-induced actions that ensure the success of a mission).

The Influence of Audible Alarm Loudness and Type on Clinical Multitasking.

In high-consequence industries such as health care, auditory alarms are an important aspect of an informatics system that monitors patients and alerts providers attending to multiple concurrent tasks. Alarms levels are unnecessarily high and alarm signals are uninformative. In a laboratory-based task setting, we studied 25 anesthesiology residents' responses to auditory alarms in a multitasking paradigm comprised of three tasks: patient monitoring, speech perception/intelligibility, and visual vigilance.

Discriminating between simultaneous audible alarms is easier with auditory icons.

When more than one audible alarm is heard simultaneously, discrimination may be compromised. This experiment compares near-simultaneous clinical alarms in two styles, the first are the tonal 'melodies' from the 2012/2006 version of a global medical device safety standard (IEC 60601-1-8) and the second are the auditory-icon-style recommended in the 2020 version of the same standard. Sixty-six participants were required to identify the meaning and priority of four different clinical alarms for one of the two styles of alarm (between-subjects).

Applying Human Factors Engineering to Address the Telemetry Alarm Problem in a Large Medical Center.

Objective: Address the alarm problem by redesigning, reorganizing, and reprioritizing to better discriminate alarm sounds and displays in a hospital.

Background: Alarms in hospitals are frequently misunderstood, disregarded, and overridden.

Method: Discovery-oriented, intervention, and translational studies were conducted.

An Experimental Validation of Masking in IEC 60601-1-8:2006-Compliant Alarm Sounds.

Objective: This research investigated whether the psychoacoustics of simultaneous masking, which are integral to a model-checking-based method, previously developed for detecting perceivability problems in alarm configurations, could predict when IEC 60601-1-8-compliant medical alarm sounds are audible.

Background: The tonal nature of sounds prescribed by IEC 60601-1-8 makes them potentially susceptible to simultaneous masking: where concurrent sounds render one or more inaudible due to human sensory limitations. No work has experimentally assessed whether the psychoacoustics of simultaneous masking accurately predict IEC 60601-1-8 alarm perceivability.

Auditory Icon Alarms Are More Accurately and Quickly Identified than Current Standard Melodic Alarms in a Simulated Clinical Setting.

Background: Current standard audible medical alarms are difficult to learn and distinguish from one another. Auditory icons represent a new type of alarm that has been shown to be easier to learn and identify in laboratory settings by lay subjects. In this study, we test the hypothesis that icon alarms are easier to learn and identify than standard alarms by anesthesia providers in a simulated clinical setting.

Classifying Alarms: Seeking Durability, Credibility, Consistency, and Simplicity.

Alongside the development and testing of new audible alarms intended to support International Electrotechnical Commission 60601-1-8, a global standard concerned with alarm safety, the categories of risk that the standard denotes require further thought and possible updating. In this article, we revisit the origins of the categories covered by the standard. These categories were based on the ways that tissue damage can be caused.