Insights & Solutions

The goal for this project was to change a patient’s hospital experience through specific environmental design features aimed at reducing stress.

Developed through extensive review of research, surveys, site tests, and review and validation by expert advisory council members, this standard set of evidence-based design checklists and post-occupancy evaluation (POE) tools can be used by interior designers to apply research to healthcare design projects and to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of three types of hospital patient rooms: adult medical-surgical, adult intensive care, and maternity care.

This tool provides healthcare designers and professionals with ideas on how to address the issue of noise in facility design.

Learn about: how St. Mary's Hospital targeted noise reduction goals for their cardiac care unit, about onsite sound measurements that informed material selection, and about design changes that resulted in reduced noise from the highest sources of sound.

Learn about: the impact of noise on both patient and staff outcomes, about the methods the research team used to evaluate noise levels, and the difference between patient and staff perceptions of noise sources.