Walk into a hospital intensive care unit and hear the din: A ventilator honks loudly. An infusion pump emits a high-pitched beep-beep every six seconds. A blood pressure monitor pushes out one long tone after another.
This particular racket, at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, comes from medical devices and equipment that scans for potentially dangerous changes in patients' heart rhythm, blood pressure and other vital signs.
But most of the noises are false alarms or don't require action. The ventilator sounds a warning because a patient coughs. The infusion pump beeps after running out of a medication the patient no longer needs. The blood pressure monitor goes off after a nurse adjusts a catheter in the patient's artery.