Insights & Solutions

As part of the noise toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about how excessive noise can negatively impact patients and staff in the hospital environment, ways to improve patients’ perception of sound, and low-cost, medium-cost, and high-cost design strategies that can reduce noise.

Learn about: how communication plays a vital role in nurses’ daily responsibilities, which evidence-based design features support effective communication efforts and why improving communication can lead to best outcomes and impact a facility’s bottom line. 

This session reviews the research and design implemented by HDR at Central Washington and how it integrated lean strategies and all 8 steps of the evidence-based design process to deliver a new patient bed tower. Learn how these strategies have impacted both work processes and employee satisfaction. The presenters will discuss their methodology and results from the research conducted, and how that research impacted the design of the hospital, its occupants, and the efficiency of the building.

The following are compiled from research literature, case studies, interviews, and other materials to provide an overview on the topic of noise.  

Learn about: the contribution technologies made to improve patient outcomes, the use of multiple technologies to improve patient care, and the strategies used by the design team to avoid creating a solitary feeling for the nurses working in a decentralized configuration. 

Learn about: how one hospital’s emergency room pilot project increased patient satisfaction, the standards developed post-pilot to decrease noise transfer to other areas of the hospital, and why having design changes on paper may not be enough.

Learn about: the ways sound can support a healing environment, creating a culture of appropriate noise levels within a busy healthcare setting and engaging staff  in building a healing environment in their own units, for patients and for themselves.