Hospital wards noise levels compromise patient's recovery

Main Category: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Article Date: 08 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT


A study carried out in the USA found that hospital wards are much noisier at night than health professionals had realised.

In this study, nurses volunteered to sleep in hospital wards (hospital bedrooms where patients are). They found that rest can be almost impossible. The noisiest times were during staff shift changes.

'We wanted to experience the patient's perspective, so we became patients for one night. We got an earful,' said Cheryl Cmiel of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, who helped lead the study.

Noise readings reached as high as 113 decibels--about as much noise as a rock concert or chain saw makes, Cmiel and colleagues report in the February issue of American Journal of Nursing.

The most noise was at the morning shift change, around 7 a.m., although the 11 p.m. shift change also was noisy.

'Adequate sleep is important to the healing process, and sleeping in the hospital is notoriously difficult,' say the authors

They suggest ways to cut down the noise, including:

� moving staff conferences at shift change to an enclosed room, instead of at the open nurses' desk

� putting foam rubber padding in the chart holders outside patient rooms

� closing the doors to patients' rooms.

After these changes were made, the noise level fell to 86 decibels at shift change, an 80% reduction but still equivalent to the noise made by a power lawn mower.

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