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 tas...

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Published in:Journal of Medical Systems Vol. 46; no. 1; pp. 1 - 20
Main Authors: Bruder, Alexandra L., Rothwell, Clayton D., Fuhr, Laura I., Shotwell, Matthew S., Edworthy, Judy Reed, Schlesinger, Joseph J.
Format: pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Springer Nature Jan2022
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jan2022
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      pub: Springer Nature
      place: New York, New York
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        10.1007/s10916-021-01794-9
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        atl: The Influence of Audible Alarm Loudness and Type on Clinical Multitasking.
      aug:
        au:
          Bruder, Alexandra L.
          Rothwell, Clayton D.
          Fuhr, Laura I.
          Shotwell, Matthew S.
          Edworthy, Judy Reed
          Schlesinger, Joseph J.
        affil: Department of Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 1211 21st Avenue South, Medical Arts Building, Suite 422, 37212, Nashville, TN, USA
      sug:
        subj:
          Security Measures, Electronic
          Loudness Perception
          Multitasking Behavior
          Anesthesiology
          Interns and Residents
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Human
          Monitoring, Physiologic
          Speech Perception
          Speech Intelligibility
          Visual Perception
          Noise
          Music
          Reaction Time
          Descriptive Statistics
          Logistic Regression
          Linear Regression
          Odds Ratio
          Confidence Intervals
          Male
          Female
          Adult
          Clinical Competence Evaluation
          Attention
          Adult: 19-44 years
          Male
          Female
      ab: 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. These tasks were in the presence of background noise plus/minus music, which served as an attention-diverting stimulus. Alarms signified clinical decompensation and were either conventional alarms or a novel informative auditory icon alarm. Both alarms were presented at four different levels. Task performance (accuracy and response times) were analyzed using logistic and linear mixed-effects regression. Salient findings were 1), the icon alarm had similar performance to the conventional alarm at a +2 dB signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) (accuracy: OR 1.21 (95% CI 0.88, 1.67), response time: 0.04 s at 2 dB (95% CI: –0.16, 0.24), which is a much lower level than current clinical environments; 2) the icon alarm was associated with 27% greater odds (95% CI: 18%, 37%) of correctly addressing the vigilance task, regardless of alarm SNR, suggesting crossmodal/multisensory multitasking benefits; and 3) compared to the conventional alarm, the icon alarm was associated with an absolute improvement in speech perception of 4% in the presence of an attention-diverting auditory stimulus (p = 0.031). These findings suggest that auditory icons can provide multitasking benefits in cognitively demanding clinical environments.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        pictorial
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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