Previously, if a vital signs alarm was tripped within PC-Display then as long as the alarm tones were enabled it would sound a very 'alerting' repetitive sound until either all parameters were within their alarm limits or until the user manually silenced the alarm tones. However, doing so would mean that if you wanted to be alerted to a tripped alarm in the future you would have to re-enable the alarm tones manually. And if the parameter that first tripped the alarm was still out of bounds then this could become quite annoying.
Now you have the option to set a "snooze" time for the alarm tones in much the same way as the snooze bar on an alarm clock. Therefore, when the alarm tones sound you would silence them as normal, but instead of this disabling the alarm tones altogether it will keep them silenced only for the duration that you configure as the snooze time. At the end of this time it re-enables the alarm tones automatically without you having to do anything. The available choices for snooze times are:
- 10 seconds
- 30 seconds
- 1 minute
- 5 minutes
- 10 minutes
- 30 minutes
If, however, you do wish to disable the alarm tones entirely then select the Silence Alarms button once more while the snooze is active. Or, if the alarm tones are enabled then select the Silence Alarms button twice to disable it. This is true whether you select the Silence Alarms on your wireless remote, from the PC-Display toolbar or from the Tools menu. You will know that the snooze is active by the yellow indicator text in the Status area at the bottom left of the screen.
To configure the alarm tone snooze as a default value, do the following:
- Open PC-Display and do not connect to your wireless remote. (Click the Cancel button on the "Select Wireless Remote Connection" window)
- Select the "Edit Default Configuration" option at the top of the Tools menu.
- Within the General tab, at the top right you should see a combo box next to "Alarm Tone Snooze".
- The default value is Off (disabled). Select the snooze time you wish.
- Click the OK button to save these changes.
You can also change this setting while monitoring by opening the Current Configuration window:
- With PC-Display open while connected to your wireless remote you can get to the Current Configuration window by doing any of the following:
- Click the cog icon from the toolbar at the top of the screen
- Select "Edit Current Configuration" from the Tools menu (about half-way down)
- Hold down the Control (Ctrl) and 'E' keys on your keyboard
- Within the General tab, at the top right you should see a combo box next to "Alarm Tone Snooze".
- The default value is Off (disabled). Select the snooze time you wish.
- Click OK to make changes to your current monitoring session.