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Little is known about noise levels inside hospitals and its effect on healing, safety, staff, and doctors. Many independent studies of noise levels in a wide range of hospital venues in many countries have been reported in the literature authored mainly by physicians and nurses. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set guidelines for noise levels in hospitals, but none of the reported studies meet WHO guidelines. In most cases noise levels are more then 15 dB A-weighted higher then those specified by WHO guidelines. Since 1960 the average noise levels in hospitals has increased an average of 0.38 dB per year during daytime hours and 0.42 dB during the night. This talk reviews the state of the art on interior hospital noise control and the remaining challenging issues. Equivalent sound pressure levels as a function of location, frequency and time of day were measured in five different venues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland. Results of our measurements, which confirm the trends seen in prior studies, will be used to describe patterns of hospital interior noise and avenues ripe for further investigation.
West et al. (Thu,) studied this question.