Noise in hospitals redux

Abstract

A major result of the patient survey, conducted as part of the study, Noise in Hospitals, published in 1963, and funded by the U.S. Public Health Service, was that patients in private and semi‐private rooms could hear conversations from the corridor and, on occasion, discussions of their diagnosis and condition by hospital staff. Also noted was the audibility of conversations from adjacent rooms. The study covered eight eastern hospitals of varied size. The results showed background ambient sound kevels in patient rooms, in the low‐to‐mid 40 dB(A) range. In general, the spectra, with low mid‐ and high‐frequency levels, show why speech in the corridor, at normal levels, was highly intelligible in patient rooms in a number of hospitals. Much of the noise in hospitals is not continuous and that which was continuous, often had undesirable spectral or cyclic characteristics that added to the annoyance of the patients, but did not interfere with speech intelligibility, even with high, annoying, low‐frequency levels. More recent information from one of the original hospitals and work by others indicates that the problem of noise in hospitals has not yet been well addressed.