Walk down a care hallway at almost any time of day and you will hear it: call lights, bed and chair alarms, door alarms, overhead pages, phones and device beeps. Residents are disturbed, staff stop noticing and the signals that matter get lost among the ones that do not. Alarm fatigue is well known in hospitals, and long-term care settings face the same problem.
The solution is not turning things off. It is a deliberate review that cuts noise and protects the alarms that save lives.
When staff hear alarms constantly, they begin to tune them out. A real fall alarm may get the same delayed response as a false one. Noise also affects residents, who may have trouble sleeping, feel anxious or become agitated, and it can wear down staff morale.
Reducing needless alerts improves response to the important ones.
Gather a small team that includes nursing leadership, aides, maintenance and someone from IT or your vendor. Walk the building at different times, including night shift, and list every sound source.
Call light systems and their tones.
Bed, chair and wander-guard alarms.
Exit door alarms.
Overhead paging.
Phones, ringers and mobile devices.
Medical equipment alarms.
Note which alarms fire most often, which are cancelled without action and which are hard to distinguish by sound.
Sort alarms into groups.
Critical. Immediate threat to safety, such as a fall, an exit-seeking resident or an emergency.
Important. Needs prompt attention but not an emergency.
Informational. Helpful but not urgent, such as routine notifications.
Anything critical must stay clear and reliable. The goal is to cut from the lower categories.
Alarms assigned to residents who no longer need them. Review orders and risk assessments regularly.
Sensitivity set too high, causing false triggers.
Door alarms triggered by routine staff or visitor traffic.
Overhead pages used for messages that could go to a phone or secure messaging system.
Alarms nobody can reset quickly, leaving them sounding.
Duplicate notifications, such as the same event sounding in several places.
For bed and chair alarms, review whether each resident still needs one based on clinical assessment and your policies. Involve the interdisciplinary team, because decisions about alarm use should be clinical, not simply technical.
Work with maintenance or the vendor on settings, and check that sensors are positioned correctly.
Use staff phones or secure messaging for non-urgent communication, and keep overhead paging for emergencies and true all-staff needs.
Staff should recognize the difference between a call light, a fall alarm and an exit alarm without looking.
Lower volumes at night where practical, while keeping urgent alerts audible.
Where your systems support it, send alerts to the assigned caregiver's device instead of announcing them throughout the hallway.
Never reduce critical alarms just for the sake of quiet. Exit alarms for residents at risk of elopement, for instance, need to be dependable. Review any change with clinical leadership first.
Track alarm counts for a couple of weeks as a baseline.
Make one or two changes at a time.
Ask staff and residents how it feels.
Check response times and incident reports for unintended effects.
Repeat quarterly.
Many alarm and paging systems depend on networks, wireless coverage and phone infrastructure. UnityCare IT can check that those systems are reliable, help route notifications to staff devices and keep configurations documented. The clinical decisions stay with your care team, and we make sure the technology behind them is dependable.
An outsourced IT department with proactive maintenance and one number to call.
Call or text: 405-285-3845
New customers: start@unitycareit.com
Existing customers: support@unitycareit.com
Address: UnityCare Technologies, 2524 N Broadway Ste 554, PMB 947974, Edmond, Oklahoma 73034-4172