Owner-defined criteria for privacy in a medical center facility

Abstract

In this consulting project a program was developed to allow the occupants of the proposed building to be active participants in the evaluation and establishment of noise reduction and speech privacy requirements. Through personal interviews and a questionnaire, the doctors of a group medical practice were asked to rate their subjective reactions to speech privacy in their present facility. Objective acoustic measurements of NR between spaces were also made and correlated to the subjective responses. In this manner, the doctors had a self-defined scale of values to compare existing and proposed isolation for their newly designed facility. Also, the architect was able to present the owner with the cost implications of several alternative constructions which were proposed to provide different levels of privacy. The final decisions regarding materials and isolation could then be made by the doctors on terms that they themselves had helped to define. An additional measurement program established the maximum background-noise-level environment in which fetal heart beats could be satisfactorily measured.