Users should learn the system alarms in various alarm conditions. The only effective way to learn these is by experience. The worst time to learn by experience is in emergency situations. Users should have the opportunity to experience the system alarms in special training sessions.
Alarms require training, so that in emergency, the medical staff recognizes them immediately. Therefore, alarm systems should be provided with a training feature, enabling users to simulate various alarm conditions and learn how they sound.
Training mode is a means to make the users experience how the system should behave in risky situations. Training is essential for ensuring that the users will notice and recognize alarm conditions from alarm signals.
Training mode may also be used to test the system behavior in risky situations.
Training may be based on simulating real alarm scenarios. The training feature may be provided with a set of predefined emergency scenarios, from which the user can select and try. A training scenario may be described in various ways. For example, it may be specified as a list of time intervals representing particular patient situations, and definitions of the sensory data in these time intervals.
The alarm conditions should include extreme sensory data and all possible technical failures, including power failure, sound failure and extreme delays.
The alarm system may also enable the users define their own scenarios, and store them as part of the department settings.