Only a tiny fraction of the regular din of beeping patient alarms in the ED actually signals a condition important enough to require a change in the patient’s care, a US study finds.

Yet the nearly constant noise tends to desensitise hospital staff to the sounds, a phenomenon dubbed “alarm fatigue,” which can result in real emergencies being missed, researchers warn in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Patients who are not critically ill need to be monitored, but “that doesn’t mean every little thing needs to be alarmed,” said the study’s lead author, Dr William Fleischman, director of quality and implementation science at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey.

Dr Fleischman recalled walking by a patient whose alarm was sounding, with no one responding.