Healthcare settings are noisy, and that noise can affect recovery time for patients and performance of employees. Healthcare ceiling tiles with high sound absorption can optimize acoustics for patient rooms and help reduce the distracting sounds of noisy nurse’s stations, loud equipment, and busy corridors.
According to The Center for Health Design, hospital noise levels have been rising consistently since the 1960s. The different aspects of sound that impact patients, staff, and visitors in hospitals include noise, speech privacy, speech intelligibility and music. “These issues associated with sound control and transmission are interrelated, and different environmental design strategies have proven successful in mitigating negative effects of noise while allowing effective verbal communication1.”
One of the lowest-scoring questions on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) satisfaction survey asks patients, “How quiet was the area around your room at night?”2
Beyond sleep loss, high noise levels have serious impacts on patient and staff. For patients, these outcomes range from annoyance to elevated blood pressure to decreased wound healing. In one study, more medications were required by surgery patients post-recovery when noise levels were high (more than 60 dB(A).3
With the mounting scientific evidence around the negative effects of acoustics, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that noise not exceed more than 30 dBA and 35 dBA in hospital wards and or treatment wings, respectively.4
For medical staff, they attribute increased stress and fatigue, emotional exhaustion and burnout to high noise levels. When a caregiver becomes so accustomed to hearing constant medical equipment beeps among all the other noise in a hospital, the sound becomes ambient and they ignore alarms—with potentially deadly consequences. When overall noise is reduced, the stress levels in healthcare staff are also reduced, allowing them to tune in to what’s important.
In post-examination or consultation rooms, it’s important that the doctor and patient can talk in a quiet and private environment. Building materials should facilitate both speech intelligibility and the prevention of sound traveling into adjacent rooms. Giving patients privacy means giving them the dignity they need to get through their recovery.
“At least three studies have shown that installing high-performance, sound-absorbing ceiling tiles and panels results in reduced noise levels.”5