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.

HCAHPS scores related to noise in the hospital environment are typically among the lowest. Acoustic intervention packages implemented by healthcare organizations are often a combination of built environment and operational measures.  

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.