Imagine now, the fact that the staff in a hospital have to listen to this for an entire 8 or 12 hour shift. It's not good, not good at all. Studies prove that and one professional is trying to do something about that. He is Michael Schutz, Associate Professor, School of the Arts at McMaster University in Hamilton. Professor Schutz thank you for taking a moment to do a Candid Conversation.
Professor Schutz: Thank you.
Cliff T.: Shout out to my Niece Miranda who is a Neo Natal Nurse at Mac, she has to hear these beeps during the shift I can imagine how annoying it must be. Professor Schutz is that what hospital staff in hospitals across the board tell you?
Professor Schutz: According to pretty much any medical staff I’ve spoke with, the noises are uniformly awful. One retired nurse even referred to her hospital as “beeping hellscape” which I think unfortunately sums it up nicely!
Cliff T.: I mentioned in my introduction that this has become and issue and studies show that those beeps heard in the hospital are not just annoying but, they are bad for health, would you elaborate on that, what effect do these beeps and tones have on people?
Professor Schutz: The most obvious health harm is that the existing alarms are so bad they are killing us. Literally. An FDA survey found problems with alarms implicated in the deaths of 566 patients. But even beyond their worst outcomes, there are major health implications for their annoyance. Disrupted sleep extends hospital stays, which means fewer beds for folks needing medical care, and increased costs for an already over-taxed medical system.
Cliff T.: So obviously Professor Schutz this needs to be fixed. But, the offending tones are on equipment already in place. Would this mean some sort of modification or would the equipment have to be swapped out?
Professor Schutz: That’s a really important question. My focus is primarily on designing new sounds that would work better, so I can’t really comment on the exact procedure in place for updating existing equipment. But I can tell you that new sounds are fairly easy to make, and can be designed in a way to be “backwards compatible” – meaning that if doctors and nurses know existing alarms, they’d recognize the new ones immediately. I also know that hospital medical equipment is continually updated. So whether these new sounds are simply part of the next round of medical equipment update, or whether we install them into existing systems, getting them changed isn’t the hard part. The difficultly is just getting people to realize that could be so much better. So often I heard people remark “I’ve always hated those beeps, but never knew they could be different.” Trust me – they can be VERY different!!
Cliff T.: I heard your interview on Quirks and Quarks and I also heard the examples of tones you provided the one we now have and the one that would be better. I have to say Professor, that second more softer tone did catch my attention. Is that the case with most people who hear the comparison tones? And is there a difference in reaction from patients vs staff?
Professor Schutz: We find that the more musical sounds are just as good at getting attention when needed (and in some cases even better). They’re just a heck of a lot less annoying. Since we’re still tinkering with designs we’re mostly testing university students and online experiments. I would love to assess medical professionals in the future. We’re just holding off on that at the moment in part as our health care workers are so overworked, so I don’t want to both them with testing until we’ve worked out the basic science of the sounds. But as far as I can tell they would lead to similar results.
Cliff T.: I am a bit curious, what prompted studies into the sounds medical machines make?
Professor Schutz: It’s a long story! I’m a performing musician, and also a music cognition researcher. I got very interested in the psychology of music after discovering a surprising musical illusion (www.maplelab.net/illusion). Musical implications aside, it shows that our brain processes musical sounds in ways that are different than the kinds of sounds often used for research. What I call the “tone beep.” I find those tone beeps awfully annoying, and was disappointed to find the terrible beeps common in scientific studies of hearing.
So my team started synthesizing more complex sounds for our experiments on basic listening questions. And then one day a medical doctor got wind of this work, and introduced me to the problem of terrible beeps in the ICU. It was then I realized that some of the basic research questions my team specializes in have this really important application for public health. And I thought that was neat. We can actually use music perception to save lives. How cool is that?!
Cliff T.: What is the most common reaction you are getting when you speak on this topic with people who have never heard about this issue before?
Professor Schutz: I find people uniformly hate current alarm sounds. Most are shocked they could be changed, and often very excited. I’ve heard so many heart breaking stories about time people spent in hospitals being annoyed by them. Some people then get angry that they were subjected to such terrible sounds when they didn’t have to be this bad!
Cliff T.: I would assume that we are still in the early days with regard to deploying changes to medical devices audio outputs. What kind of progress have you seen on this front?
Professor Schutz: So far the reception has been wonderful! I’ve had the opportunity to connect with researchers all over the world interested in improving medical alarms. I’m usually the biggest “sound geek” in the room for these conversations, so they’re quite keen to hear about new ideas. Getting the opportunity to do things like the TEDx talk and the Quirks and Quarks segment have been really rewarding and helpful. I can reach more people with a 10 minute radio segment than a 10 page academic article! Recently someone from the IEC (International Electrotechnic Commission) reached out after hearing the Quirks and Quarks interview you heard, and I’m excited to possibly contribute some new ideas to future designs.
Cliff T.: I have to ask Professor Schutz. I know that this is serious stuff, but is there some sort of fun aspect to this. What is the cool factor in changing a medical machines tone or beep?
Professor Schutz: As a life-long audio geek, part of me is just tickled that I’ve found an “excuse” for playing around with sound. As a musician, I spend a lot of time thinking about sound, crafting musical sounds, and event exploring sounds in the world. As a researcher I focus on doing experiments with sound. And as it turns out, this all has an actual public health benefit. As my mother said after watching the TEDx talk, “wow, now I can tell my friends you are the kind of doctor who helps people”. Thanks mom 😀
Cliff T.: Professor Schutz thank you very much for taking time to reach out and do a Candid Conversation. It just goes to show that science can be very interesting, important and in a lot of ways fun.
Professor Schutz: My pleasure – always happy to help spread good ideas about better sound!
Professor Schutz is an Associate Professor, School of the Arts at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario Canada. To get an idea of what Professor Schutz does and is doing visit his McMaster Experts page by clicking this LINK
Editors Note: Just to be clear on one thing re: hospital sounds. Professor Schutz stated, I'm not claiming the beeps are doing more harm than good. I would not recommend just silencing them all for example! My point is just that they could be a whole heck of a lot better. They serve a very useful and important role, which is why it's so acoustically tragic that they are built onreally terrible "beeps"
