How the machines aren't as reliable as we imagined them to be, and, humans are still, needed in the interpretations of the results of what these machines put out, translated…
Those who'd ever watched the medical themed soap operas, all heard the sound of the monitors in the I.C.U., when something is up, the machines would use various means to call the medical staff members over to check on the patients. Sometimes, the calls are gentle, sometimes, shrilling, and, when the wires weren't connected properly, it'd also, used that gentle chime to remind the operators, but when the situation is emergent, then it would let out the high-pitched screams, to get everybody's attention all around.
The orientations for the newbies in the general internal medicine department had once used this as a subject, testing the newly hired nurses to decipher the meanings of the rings. The senior nursing staff smiled and watched their younger schoolmates answered more than twenty questions, like the experienced mechanics, training the apprentices, wanting the trainees to make out what the sounds meant by simply listening, is the drip stuck? The heartrate too fast? The airway? Or the connections of the wires to the machines?
There was once, that the surveillance in the I.C.U. started screaming, the nurse raised her head, looked, immediately called aloud, "Bed thirteen, VT!"
VT is a lethal form of arrythmia, if not taken care of immediately, the patients would die, and there would be the necessities of the shocks, to performing CPR on the patients to save their lives.
In this sort of a call, everybody's heartrates started speeding up, the blood pressures rise up, some rushed to the frontlines, some rushed to get the defibrillator cart, everybody knows where they're supposed to be doing at the time. But this time, as we rammed into the room, the leader of the pack slammed on the brakes immediately, and, everybody behind her couldn't slam on their brakes, and, everyone piled up behind her.
The patient, sitting up on the bed, does NOT at all, look like he was dying, he was foaming in the mouth, with the toothbrush in his right hand, the cup in his left, a wash basin on his lap, his movements, froze in mid-air, and surprised, to see how all the medical staff members had, barged into his room.
to interpret what this means, the contextual must be included...photo from onlin
The physician lifted his head, checked the surveillance monitor, found that VT had halted, alarm is dismissed, everybody let out that sigh of relief, leaving the physician and the primary nurse to check on the patient, and he was, okay.
And yet, as the primary nurse was still checking him, the machine started sounding the alarms again, VT came back! The troop, once again, rerouted back, and what we saw, was exactly as, before, the patient, froze in that same motion, toothbrush in his right, cup in left, once again, he was, surprised to see the team of medical experts rushing, in. And once he'd stopped his motions, the machine stopped, alerting.
This is a false alarm, the false reading of VT heartrate, the yanking of the cord of the electrodes, that's caused the alarms to sound, and, the images that the machine received had, fooled the computer, then, the machine started, screaming, again; as this patient stopped brushing his teeth, and stopped yanking at the patch, then, the VT stopped, but, once the emergency teams leaves, he'd continued brushing his teeth, yanked at the pad, then, "ventricular tachycardia" resurfaces, again.
Everybody returned back to one's own original position, the medical staff members switched the pad to another place, and this fixed the problems of the false alarms.
The readings of the machines or A.I. may not be accurate all the time.
For instance, when we take our blood pressures, if the machine showed that our heartrate is only thirty, it may be that the heartrate is way too low, and this needed emergency handling; or it may be caused by the premature ventricular contraction, causing the heartrate to slow down.
The ventricular premature contractions, where the heart pulsed earlier, with incomplete contractions, the heartrate wasn't read correctly, the blood pressure machines could not detect the heartrate, and, mistakenly read it as the heart had, stopped; like how the buses always come at the hours on the dot…when the ventricular premature contractions happen, it was like the bus that was supposed to come at nine, coming at eight, and, because it'd come early, there are, almost, no passengers, but the originally set to come at nine bus, didn't come, and the heartrate recorded by the machines was the fully occupied bus, to the blood pressures, there's only, the bus that came at 8:10 and not the one that came at 8:15. So, the reading of the heartrate is slow, but that's, a false read, and, if these patients continued to get recorded by the ECG, to the 8:15, then, we will find, that the actual heart rate isn't that slow, to the thirties on the read, but in reality, it's actually, fifty to sixty beats.
With the mobile medical equipment being in our easy access, and yet, the accuracies of these readings by the machines, are all over the places, when the alarms sound, don't' rush to treat, do find the professionally trained, to confirm again, that, is the right way of, handling these situations.
So, here, the machines are, quite, unreliable, because, they can't interpret what is a false positive, and this would be bad, because, if we relied solely on the machines, to tell us everything, then, we would misinterpret the false positives as the positives, and the false negatives as negatives, and, that would, in turn, harm the patients who are exerting the signs, but the machines can't catch the alerts on, so, we still need humans around.
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