Learnability and discriminability of melodic medical equipment alarms*

Summary Melodic alarms proposed in the IEC 60601‐1‐8 standard for medical electrical equipment were tested for learnability and discriminability. Thirty‐three non‐anaesthetist participants learned the alarms over two sessions of practice, with or without mnemonics suggested in the standard. Fewer than 30% of participants could identify the alarms with 100% accuracy at the end of practice. Confusions persisted between pairs of alarms, especially if mnemonics were used during learning (p  =  0.011). Participants responded faster (p  <  0.00001) and more accurately (p  =  0.002) to medium priority alarms than to high priority alarms, even though they rated the high priority alarms as sounding more urgent (p  <  0.00001). Participants with at least 1 year of formal musical training identified the alarms more accurately (p  =  0.0002) than musically untrained participants, and found the task easier overall (p  <  0.00001). More intensive studies of the IEC 60601‐1‐8 alarms are needed for their effectiveness to be determined.