Monitoring vital signs with time-compressed speech.

Spearcons-time-compressed speech phrases-may be an effective way of communicating vital signs to clinicians without disturbing patients and their families. Four experiments tested the effectiveness of spearcons for conveying oxygen saturation (SpO2) and heart rate (HR) of one or more patients. Experiment 1 demonstrated that spearcons were more effective than earcons (abstract auditory motifs) at conveying clinical ranges.