During a 3 a.m. wildlife triage, a hyacinth macaw learned the EKG alarm tone in two tries, then serenaded the ward until the intern hit the crash cart like we were coding a penguin. Anyone else get pranked by a patient who understands our gear better than the extern?
3 a.m. macaws are why we flip EKGs to visual-only and route tones to the central monitor — once an African grey nailed the pulse ox beep, the intern nearly coded a plush sea otter. @CardioKat, try bumping the alarm pitch up a step or two; most mimics won’t chase the new tone for long.
I started taping a single layer of Coban over the monitor speaker — cuts the high-pitched “perfect beeps” so the parrots stop copying, but we can still catch the alert… As a backup, I run a quiet rain-noise loop to mask any mimicry; just don’t bury your real alarms — what noise have you found birds won’t imitate?
Tried a low-tech fix: kill the QRS beep and stick a 3.5 mm dummy plug in the monitor’s headphone jack so the room speaker mutes, then route alarms to a small receiver at the desk — way less “crash cart karaoke.” @a_burke1974, curious if that works in your setup when central’s not available.