Dr. Lawrence Lynn, President of Lyntek, co-authored an article with Dr. J Paul Curry, titled Patterns of unexpected in-hospital deaths: a root cause analysis, published in Patient Safety in Surgery. 2011; 5:3, visit here. The article explains that, in contrast to the simplicity of the numeric threshold breach method of generating alerts, the actual patterns of evolving death are complex and do not share common features until near death. New methods and technologies which detect and identify the actual patterns of evolving death should be implemented—to combat alarm fatigue, and improve patient care.
This article remains one of the top ten all-time most popular articles in the journal, Patient Safety in Surgery. A truncated version of the article was also published in The Official Journal of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation, titled “Threshold Monitoring, Alarm Fatigue, and the Patterns of Unexpected Hospital Death,” visit here.
