Experiences evaluating acoustics in occupied hospitals

Abstract

The acoustic performance of patient rooms for four fully operational Veterans Affairs hospitals were completed over the past year. The nurse and facility managers goal was to identify the causes and solutions to improve the “quiet at night” scores. The testing included measuring speech privacy between patients and staff, background sound, occurrence rate of noise impacts during nighttime hours, and reverberation time. The testing procedures and methods were completed in cooperation with the hospital staff to optimize accuracy of the results while maintaining patient privacy, safety, and comfort. This included short duration pink noise measurements from room to room, and from nurses stations to patient care areas; these measurements provided accurate speech privacy metrics, though required direct approval and coordination with the nursing staff. The occurrence rate and background noise level was evaluated with 12 hour continuously logging sound level meters in patient rooms on tripods near patients with the approval of patients and guidance of nursing staff.