History Main / UrgentMedicalAlert

* Averted in ''Franchise/ArchieComics'', of all things, when our heroes go to the hospital to look for Jughead. They happen to see an alarm at the unattended nurse's station, and rush to the room, to find that the patient has been calling the nurse to pick up a book he dropped. Then the real nurse comes in, and apologizes. When they find Jughead, he's volunteered as a candy-striper, [[VerySpecialEpisode and tells them about how the hospital is understaffed]]. [[HarsherInHindsight Did I mention this story was published in the 1970s or 1960s?]]

Real life looks nothing like this. [[CryingWolf Bedside alarms are so pervasive in the hospital that the people working there learn to largely ignore them.]] "False alarms" in the form of loose leads, sensing devices removed, tubing kinked, or insignificant perturbations of vital signs are far more common than acute emergencies. Nurses pay attention to the alarms of their own patients, but it's their job to determine whether a real problem exists, so the whole floor need not come running at the sound of every beep. Some alarms ''will'' trigger this kind of response; pushing the "Emergency" or "Code" button that's on the wall in every patient room will set off an alarm that sounds like ''nothing'' else and is guaranteed to bring everyone up to the housekeeper running (and setting it off by mistake will ''not'' make you popular with them!), and Intensive Care Units [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin by their very nature]] tend to contain patients where any change in vital signs needs the immediate attention of a nurse. But most of the time, the alarm is treated with a kind of benign contempt.

Frequently the patient him/herself, rather than being unconscious or dying, will call the nurse to report that an alarm is going off. Usually this is because it has woken them up, has been going long enough to get really annoying, or is making it hard to hear the TV.

Real life looks nothing like this. [[CryingWolf Bedside alarms are so pervasive in the hospital that the people working there learn to largely ignore them.]] "False alarms" in the form of loose leads, sensing devices removed, tubing kinked, or insignificant perturbations of vital signs are far more common than acute emergencies. Nurses pay attention to the alarms of their own patients, but it's their job to determine whether a real problem exists, so the whole floor need not come running at the sound of every beep. Some alarms ''will'' trigger this kind of response; pushing the "Emergency" or "Code" button that's on the wall in every patient room will set off an alarm that sounds like ''nothing'' else and is guaranteed to bring everyone up to the housekeeper running, and Intensive Care Units [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin by their very nature]] tend to contain patients where any change in vital signs needs the immediate attention of a nurse. But most of the time, the alarm is treated with a kind of benign contempt.

%%* ''Series/{{ER}}'' is the [[UrExample granddaddy of 'em all]].

-> My first code. See, here's how it works: someone's heart fails, they beep everyone. The first doctor in has to run the room, tell everyone what to do, basically decide if the patient lives or dies.
-->--'''J.D.''', ''Series/{{Scrubs}}''

Real life looks nothing like this. [[CryingWolf Bedside alarms are so pervasive in the hospital that the people working there learn to largely ignore them.]] "False alarms" in the form of loose leads, sensing devices removed, tubing kinked, or insignificant perturbations of vital signs are far more common than acute emergencies. Nurses pay attention to the alarms of their own patients, but it's their job to determine whether a real problem exists, so the whole floor need not come running at the sound of every beep. Some alarms ''will'' trigger this kind of response - for example, pushing the "Emergency" or "Code" button that's on the wall in every patient room will set off an alarm that sounds like ''nothing'' else and is guaranteed to bring everyone up to the housekeeper running - but most of the time, the alarm is treated with a kind of benign contempt.

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* Averted in ''ArchieComics'', of all things, when our heroes go to the hospital to look for Jughead. They happen to see an alarm at the unattended nurse's station, and rush to the room, to find that the patient has been calling the nurse to pick up a book he dropped. Then the real nurse comes in, and apologizes. When they find Jughead, he's volunteered as a candy-striper, [[VerySpecialEpisode and tells them about how the hospital is understaffed]]. [[HarsherInHindsight Did I mention this story was published in the 1970s or 1960s?]]

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and lampshades the false alarm problem-only to find out just after that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

* Happens all the time on ''GreysAnatomy''.
* OnceAnEpisode on ''{{House}}'', a scene starts with the doctors bursting into the patient of the week's room as a bedside alarm sounds.
%%* ''{{ER}}'' is the [[UrExample granddaddy of 'em all]].
%%** StElsewhere [[OlderThanTheyThink came first]].

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and lampshades the false alarm problem-only to find out just after that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

[[CryingWolf Sadly, this is a clear failure. Bedside alarms are so pervasive in the hospital that the people working there learn to largely ignore them.]] "False positives" in the form of loose leads, sensing devices removed, tubing kinked, or insignificant perturbations of vital signs are far more common than acute emergencies. Nurses pay attention to the alarms of their own patients, but it's their job to determine whether a real problem exists, so the whole floor need not come running at the sound of every beep.

Sometimes the patient himself, rather than being unconscious or dying, will call the nurse to report that an alarm is going off. Usually this is because it has woken them up, has been going long enough to get really annoying, or is making it hard to hear the TV.

* ''Manga/AnesthesiologistHana'': One chapter is specifically about urgent medical alerts, the "Code Blue." The first time it happens, by the time Hana arrives the emergency is already over, and her specialty wouldn't have been terribly helpful (and her friend the opthamologist admits she doesn't often get to be helpful either), but the second alert is one where anesthesiology is exactly what's needed.

%% Zero Context Examples commented out. Don't uncomment without adding context.

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and lampshades the false alarm problem-only to find out just adter that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and –lampshades the false alarm problem-only to find out just adter that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and –{{Lampshade}}s the false alarm problem-only to find out just adter that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and –️{{Lampshade}}s the false alarm problem-only to find out just adter that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

* One {{Series/Emergency}} ep averts this and –️{{Lampshades}} the false alarm problem-only to find out just adter that it was a real problem, a fire in a patient room.

** Okay, the mental patient will probably chase anyone, but the rest of them don't have an excuse. On the other hand, though, given that Ponyville is a small, rural town in a premodern setting, it is likely that it still has a living tradition of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry hue and cry]] as its principal method of law enforcement, to which those ponies were responding.

--> My first code. See, here's how it works: someone's heart fails, they beep everyone. The first doctor in has to run the room, tell everyone what to do, basically decide if the patient lives or dies.
-->--J.D., ''Series/{{Scrubs}}''

Sadly, this is a clear failure. Bedside alarms are so pervasive in the hospital that the people working there learn to largely ignore them. "False positives" in the form of loose leads, sensing devices removed, tubing kinked, or insignificant perturbations of vital signs are far more common than acute emergencies. Nurses pay attention to the alarms of their own patients, but it's their job to determine whether a real problem exists, so the whole floor need not come running at the sound of every beep.

SubTrope of RedAlert.

* Averted in ArchieComics, of all things, when our heroes go to the hospital to look for Jughead. They happen to see an alarm at the unattended nurse's station, and rush to the room, to find that the patient has been calling the nurse to pick up a book he dropped. Then the real nurse comes in, and apologizes. When they find Jughead, he's volunteered as a candy-striper, [[VerySpecialEpisode and tells them about how the hospital is understaffed]]. [[HarsherInHindsight Did I mention this story was published in the 1970s or 1960s?]]

* ''{{ER}}'' is the [[UrExample granddaddy of 'em all]].
** StElsewhere [[OlderThanTheyThink came first]].

* Also happens quite a bit on ''Series/{{House}}''.

This involves dropping everything at the sound of an alarm. This is usually because the patient has entered cardiac arrest.

Sometimes, fiction shows us the world not as it is, but [[WishFulfillment as we wish it could be]]. Such is the case when in a medical setting the silence around a patient's bed is broken by the shrill shock of a monitor alarm, causing all the medical providers in the area to immediately direct their attention to the problem which caused the alarm, which is invariably real and serious.

** Okay, the mental patient will probably chase anyone, but the rest of them don't have an excuse.

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* ''{{ER}}'', of course, is the [[UrExample granddaddy of 'em all]].

* Obviously, [[TropeNamer happens all the time on]] ''GreysAnatomy''.

-->-- [[Series/{{Scrubs}} J.D.]]

Sometimes the patient themselves, rather than being unconscious or dying, will call the nurse to report that an alarm is going off. Usually this is because it has woken them up, has been going long enough to get really annoying, or is making it hard to hear the TV.

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[[folder:Comics]]
* Averted in ArchieComics, of all things, when our heroes go to the hospital to look for Juggie. They happen to see an alarm at the unattended nurse's station, and rush to the room, to find that the patient has been calling the nurse to pick up a book he dropped. Then the real nurse comes in, and apologizes. When they find Jughead, he's volunteered as a candy-striper, [[VerySpecialEpisode and tells them about how the hospital is understaffed]]. [[HarsherInHindsight Did I mention this story was published in the 70s or 60s?]]

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** In the pilot episode, JD gets his first code. We see a shot of him running down the hallway, and in to a room. Turns out it's a closet where he has gone to hide. This also turns out to be a subversion, as Turk ends up shocking the guy, who turned out to have fallen asleep attached to a faulty monitor.

* {{ER}}, of course, is the [[UrExample granddaddy of 'em all]].

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