Abstract
Patients in general wards are often exposed to excessive levels of noise and activity, and high levels of noise have been associated with depression and anxiety. Previous studies have found that an appropriate acoustic environment is beneficial to the patient’s therapeutic and treatment process; however, the soundscape is rarely intentionally designed or operated to improve patient recovery, especially for psychological rehabilitation. To gain the most accurate, and least variable, estimate of acoustic environmental stimuli/properties, virtual reality (VR) technology should be used to ensure that other environmental factors are stable and uniform in order to reduce the stimulation of other environmental factors. Therefore, this study aims to discuss the influence of the acoustic environment on patient physiological/psychological indicators and the mechanism of the effect on recovery using VR technology. A digital three-dimensional (3D) model of a hospital room was constructed, and experimental subjects wore VR glasses to visualize a real ward scene. Four typical sound categories were selected to analyze the effect of the acoustic environment on recovery; physiological indicators were monitored, and psychological factors were subjectively evaluated. The results show that music plays an important role in reducing stress as it can aid in a patient’s physiological (skin conduction levels) and psychological stress recovery. Furthermore, mechanical and anthropogenic sounds exert negative effects on a patient’s stress recovery. However, the effect is only limited to psychological stress indicators. The interaction effects of demographic characteristics and the acoustic environment are not significant, and future studies could consider the social–economic characteristics of patients. Based on these findings, we provide evidence that indicates that a hospital’s acoustic environment is an important influencing factor on the stress recovery of patients and can serve as a reference for healthcare architects and policy makers.
Highlights
The indoor environment as a service carrier is most directly influenced by mental feelings, which are linked to patient comfort and mood
According to the effect size exhibited by partial η2(0.10), the soundscape could exert a substantial impact on RSCL
Exposure to mechanical and artificial noise may lead to slower skin conductance level recovery than ambient noise, the difference was not significant
Summary
The indoor environment as a service carrier is most directly influenced by mental feelings, which are linked to patient comfort and mood. Patients stay in the ward almost all day, highlighting the great importance of providing comfortable conditions in hospital buildings. The comfort environment is considered the most important factor influencing patient feelings (Buckles, 1990). Researchers have measured the noise levels or studied the sound source of various healthcare environments, such as critical care wards (Xie et al, 2013), intensive care units (Xie et al, 2009), and entrance halls (Qin et al, 2011). Noise has been identified as a major stressor in hospitals (Farrehi et al, 2016) and will influence an individual’s physical and mental health
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