When you thought it was patients you needed to watch...

Daisy4RN · Nov 15, 2018

"I think it will be easy to show there was no intent"

What in the heck did he think he was doing and saying?? So, his hands were around her neck but there was no intent?! Somebody lost it big time. I am glad she is OK.

Kooky Korky, BSN, RN · Nov 15, 2018

maybe it was all the gases.

Emergent, RN · Nov 15, 2018

Anesthesiologist Charged In Strangulation Of Nurse

An anesthesiologist went crazy, turning off alarms due to alarm fatigue. The recovery nurse kept trying to turn the alarms back on. He, then, totally lost it.

BlinkyPinky · Nov 15, 2018

What the Hell?

TriciaJ, RN · Nov 15, 2018

The guy obviously lost his marbles and was smart to retire on the spot. As for "no intent": that'll be for the jury to decide. Tough case when you put your hands around someone's throat and squeeze. He might have better luck with "temporary insanity" but that's between him and his lawyer.

I hope the nurse is okay. I hope she gets a nice cash settlement and a chunk of paid time off. And I hope the hospital reevaluates which alarms are really necessary and which ones could be done without, if any.

JKL33 · Nov 15, 2018

There will turn out to be more to this (on his part) than just being tired of alarms. It doesn't sound like he was simply silencing or pausing them, but literally turning off the monitors (article mentions that he was being asked/told not to do this d/t long re-boot times - - so it wasn't as if he just deactivated or altered individual alarm parameters). I get picture in my head of him walking around pushing the power button and blackening this screen and that one and the next one...

TBH I hope both of them are okay. He does not sound okay.

klone, MSN, RN · Nov 15, 2018

Dude! Holy ****.

CharleeFoxtrot, BSN, RN · Nov 15, 2018

No intent?!? He said that alarm fatigue was bad so the answer was to shut off vital monitoring equipment? Dude retired just in time IMO. I hate what he did, but perhaps this incident saved him from snapping at a worse moment and killing someone.

Alex Egan, LPN, EMT-B · Nov 15, 2018

He's lucky that no one went up side his head with whatever letter of 02 cylinder was handy. If my coworker is to the point hay they are being checked out, all bets are off

Davey Do · Nov 15, 2018

Emergent said:
An anesthesiologist went crazy, turning off alarms due to alarm fatigue. The recovery nurse kept trying to turn the alarms back on. He, then, totally lost it.

"Totally lost it" is a spot on phrase, Emergent.

We really don't know what makes someone snap, but it does happen. We here on AN.com have been affected by a somewhat similar, although more in magnitude, tragedy.

Endeavors to try and understand are more fruitful and can raise our consciousness more than outright degradation and punishment of the individual.

I remember seeing years ago testing where cats were hooked up to electrodes in their brains. A charge sent to the electrodes caused the cats to react violently.

Years ago, I was chatting with a neurologist and asked him if an emotionally explosive episode was not unlike a seizure, in that an overload of chemical-electro stimulation was taking place. He agreed the two were similar.

Now, I'm not excusing this anesthesiologists actions, but am considering other reasons for his behavior.

Ya know?

doodlebuttRN · Nov 15, 2018

Wait, who had alarm fatigue? The quote from the anesthesiologist in the article made it sound like he was turning off the monitors because the nurses had alarm fatigue? I'm not saying this guy was behaving logically, but I really don't understand his reasoning here. Although I am just off a long night shift and may be a bit "fatigued" myself.