Distraction factors on doctors and nurses in open-plan examination room

Abstract

In Indonesia, there exist open-plan examination rooms in government-owned general hospitals serving thousands of patients each day. In this study, we developed a questionnaire with 70 questions to assess the effect of background noise level to 45 doctors-nurses working at pediatric, obstetrics and gynecology, and audiology clinics, respectively at Dr. Soetomo General Academical Hospital. The subjects have been working for more than five years. The background noise includes conversations, baby cries, announcements whose level is about 60 dBA daily. We used a simple statistical technique to determine the most to the least distracting sounds perceptually. The results are, then, crossed the spectrum of the background noises to find out the characteristic of the most intrusive noise. The results showed that the Pediatric clinic has the highest level and dominantly with high pitch baby cries in the waiting lounge. The distraction to either the medical doctor or the nurse may have lost of focus during an examination, determining a diagnosis based on the symptoms, attentively listening to the patient. Furthermore, the intrusive noise characteristic that distracted the staffs were perceptually different. In the on-going research, we investigate a suitable masker to reduce the intrusiveness of the background noises.