Response

Thank you for your thoughtful critique of our article¹ associated with clinical alarms. Your point about “safe staffing” continues to be a major concern in the United States, especially because the nurse workforce continues to decrease due to aging, alternate career opportunities for women, and governing issues associated with the hospital work environment.

In fact, the US government recently predicted that, by 2020, nurse and physician retirements will contribute to a shortage of approximately 24 000 doctors and nearly 1 million nurses.² These workforce shortage projections have been built around the current healthcare system, which suggests that health industry leaders need to make changes in the work-force environment.

However, you should note that our survey ranked “inadequate staff to respond to alarms as they occur” as the fourth most important issue in approving alarms. Although the survey stated that staffing was not the key issue, we all know...