Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

This year will be the start of a doctoral study to be performed at an ICU department at Södra Älvsborgs Sjukhus in Borås, Sweden.

The aim of the project is to study if a holistically designed patient room in a general intensive care unit affects (supports well-being of) the occupants compared to a traditional ICU patient room. The contribution of the sound envrionment will be among the key factors to be studied.

The project is funded by Sahlgrenska Academy, at Gothenburg University and collaborates with the Institute of Architecture at Chalmers University.

Continue reading "The ICU patient room - a healing environment (new study)" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:46 PM | Permalink

At a hospital in the South of Sweden, a new meeting/lunch room was built for the staff at the emergency medical unit. When the staff used the room, they were not satisfied with the acoustics. A study was performed to evaluate how the room acoustic environment could be improved.

The relatively small acoustic intervention resulted in a lower sound pressure level and better speech intelligibility. It also resulted in a big change in how the staff perceives the sound environment.

Continue reading "A better sound environment made the hospital staff more satisfied" »

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 8:48 AM | Permalink

Approximately 60 people attended the Ecophon Healthcare Conference on 9th September 2009 at The King’s Fund HO in London. Host for the day, Anthony Thomas, concept developer at Ecophon UK, brought together an appealing range of topics specifically aiming to support good design of our Healthcare premises.

Prominent speakers were a.o.
- Richard Mazuch of Nightingale & Associes
- Prof. Brian Duerden of the Department of Health
- Adrian Popplewell of Ramboll Acoustics

Please read further for the summary and the presentations

Continue reading "Acoustics at Healthcare conference" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Lars Johansson, functional planner at Locum

As a property developer, it's important to be as clear as possible when defining your room acoustic requirements. With this in mind, Locum and Ecophon have developed a "Sound Guide" to achieve a good acoustic outcome in healthcare buildings.

Lars Johansson, functional planner at Locum who is involved in developing the Sound guide, says: “The Sound guide is a useful tool for us when deciding our acoustic requirements in “sound sensitive” rooms."

What we all want is a good and appropriate sound environment, but what is a good sound environment? And how do we create it.........?

Continue reading "The Sound guide - a support to design well-functioning hospitals" »

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Acoustic Guidance for UK Healthcare facilities and its practical implementation are just two of the topics being presented by expert speakers at a Healthcare Conference hosted by Saint-Gobain Ecophon on 9th September at The Kings Fund HQ in London.
Other topics include Design to control Healthcare Associated Infection, Sensory Design for Healing, the Hillingdon Hospital Pilot Ward and Sustainability in Community Healthcare.
Attendance to the conference is free for invited delegates, so if you wish to apply for one of the few remaining spaces please email the Conference Co-ordinator.

Continue reading "ECOPHON UK HEALTHCARE CONFERENCE, 9th SEPT" »

Posted by Anthony Thomas at 10:28 AM | Permalink

Evidence Based Hospital Design (EBD) is a new field that guides health care construction. Research indicates that well-designed physical settings play an important role in helping hospitals to support patients healing and making hospitals better places for staff to work. The findings support the importance of improving a range of design characteristics or interventions, including good acoustic environments, nature distractions and daylight.

Continue reading "Evidence Based Design – quieter hospitals improve patient outcomes" »

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 7:49 AM | Permalink

The Building Acoustics Group of the UK's Institute of Acoustics has organised a meeting in Manchester on 16th June 2009. Entitled "Acoustics in Healthcare Environments", it will be held at the Victioria & Albert Hotel, and will discuss Key Issues relating to exactly how environmental acoustics affect healthcare outcomes.

Continue reading "I.O.A. TO HOLD "ACOUSTICS IN HEALTHCARE ENVIRONMENTS" MEETING, in JUNE 2009" »

Posted by Anthony Thomas at 1:04 PM | Permalink

It is of utmost importance that a patient is able to rest and sleep, but a Swedish study, conducted in a neurological intensive care unit, shows that is easier said than done.

Measurements were made over five days and showed average LAeq values of 53-58 dB, depending on time of day. But analysing equivalent sound pressure levels is not enough. It is also essential to analyse the occurrence and length of restorative periods, i.e. quieter periods where the noise levels is not assumed to disturb the patient’s sleep. The study shows that restorative periods last for only about 10 minutes, which means that a resting or sleeping patient will be disturbed several times an hour.

Read more about the study: Characterizing noise and perceived work environment in a neurological intensive care unit.

Continue reading "WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO SLEEP IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT?" »

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 12:53 PM | Permalink

In "Challenging Designs of Neonatal Intensive Care Units", Anne Marie Dazé Floyd, RN, MSN, CNS says:
A link has been established between exposure to constant room noise and loss in frequency and pattern discrimination essential to understanding the spoken word. Loss of an ability to discriminate speech can cause profound developmental delay by interfering with language acquisition.
In addition to the connection between noise levels and deficits in hearing discrimination, clear connections also exist between noise and physiological instability.

Continue reading "NOISE IN THE NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT (NICU)" »

Posted by Anthony Thomas at 11:39 AM | Permalink

Nurse researchers have provided evidence that hospital critical care unit (CCU) noise may put patients at risk of sleep problems. The study, by M Topf and M Bookman at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, goes on to say that technological advances in CCU's are contributing to this problem and that the results provide support for the hypothesis that CCU sound levels impact negatively on subjective sleep.

Continue reading "PATIENTS RISK SLEEP PROBLEMS FROM NOISE IN HOSPITAL CRITICAL CARE UNITS" »

Posted by Anthony Thomas at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Birmingham Women's Hospital NHS Trust took part in a regional campaign to raise awareness of noise levels in Neonatal Units and the need to reduce them. Lead by Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Cheryl Lewis, the campaign highlighted the impact noise can have on babies, and included staff training, posters and badges, and the use of a Decibel Monitor in the Unit.

Neonatal Units can be very noisy places, with the amount of medical equipment, alarms, telephones and people's voices, and this can impact upon the babies' development.

Continue reading "Campaign to reduce noise in Neonatal Units" »

Posted by Anthony Thomas at 2:16 PM | Permalink

The new HTM (Health Technical Memorandum) gives Design Criteria for Room Acoustics in UK Healthcare Premises.
The document's Executive Summary states "Noise can increase heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate and even blood cholesterol levels. Good acoustic conditions improve patient privacy and dignity, and promote essential sleep patterns. Such conditions are key to healing"
Recently published, it requires acoustic treatment, usually ceilings, to be provided in all occupied areas, including corridors.
"The requirement is ...

Continue reading "HTM 08-01 NEW UK ACOUSTIC GUIDANCE FOR HEALTHCARE" »

Posted by Anthony Thomas at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

The use of alarms in hospitals was discussed intensively during the two days session "Healthcare Acoustics & Speech Privacy".

A study presented by S. Okcu, College of Architecture, GaTech, states that a patient in an ICU can be surrounded by up to 33 different alarms from medical equipment. Not only are the alarms disturbing to the patients, they also make the task for the staff to detect and analyse them more demanding.

Ilene Bush-Vishniac
"The alarms are of utmost importance, but do we really need all these alarms?" This is a question asked by Dr. Busch-Vishniac, MacMaster University (formerly from Johns Hopkins University) who was one of the presenters at the conference. And the question is relevant; in nine out of ten times no action is taken when an alarm goes off, except for turning the alarm off.

Continue reading "Alarms in hospitals – a chaotic sound environment" »

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 1:09 PM | Permalink

Noise levels in hospitals are typically more than 15 dB(A) higher than target values given in guidelines (for example target values from WHO and the US Environmental Protection Agency). Furthermore, noise is often one of the top complaints from staff and patients. This is concluded in a review made by Hui Xie and Jian Kang at the University of Sheffield.

Continue reading "Influence of noise on patient’s sleep" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Directly after the session on healthcare and acoustics this afternoon we had a little talk with Dr Michael Phiri, one of the presenters.

Dr.Michael Phiri is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.

By Marc Janssen, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On Tuesday Adrian Popplewell of Arup Acoustics presented a paper entitled "The Future of UK Hospital Design", and here he summarises for Acoustic Bulletin his involvement in the early drafting of HTM 08.01, the new Acoustic Guidance document for Healthcare. He also talks about the Drivers for Change in Healthcare over the coming years.

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Listen to the interview (2,27 minutes).

If you have questions or comments, please contact Anthony Thomas.

E-mail:anthony.thomas@ecophon.co.uk

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:16 PM | Permalink

Dr.Michael Phiri is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.

He talks to Acoustic Bulletin about his presentation this afternoon entitled "Eliminating Environmental Stressors: managing hospital noise by design".

He is an advocate of the use of Evidence-Based Design to improve patient outcomes and reduce hospital operating costs.

For info, email:m.phiri@sheffield.ac.uk

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 2:49 PM | Permalink

I am Tobias Angelbeck, Concept Developer for Acoustics in Health Care Premises, Ecophon Germany. I talked to Dr. Jo Solet – the clinical Instructor at the Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge, MA (USA).

Right now she and her department are doing two researches.
One is a behavioural research project related to patients exposure to noise, with an outcome on measure of medical views.
The other is a virtual hospital in a neuroscience lab, studying how patients respond to specific real stimuli in a hospital environment.

Continue reading "Every decibel counts!" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Professor Kang has been involved in many acoustic research projects with the University of Sheffield, and speaks to Acoustic Bulletin on his recent and current research in Healthcare environments and summarises his presentation entitled "A Systematic Review of the Influence of Noise on Patients Sleep in Intensive Care Units".

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Listen to the interview (3,04 minutes).

Posted by Marc Janssen at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Katrin Bergmark, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon Sweden.

This question formed the introduction to the overview of acoustic standards in Europe presented by Katrin Bergmark, Concept Developer at Ecophon in Sweden. Katrin talked about the current situation regarding sound in health care premises. Hospitals are often experienced as very noisy, leading to health effects on both patients and staff. In order to create a supporting sound environment we should aim to:
- secure privacy
- lower the noise levels
- facilitate good communication

And develop standards accordingly...
Click here to read Katrin's paper

Continue reading "Why do we need standards?" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:29 PM | Permalink

This morning at 09:20 the session called healthcare acoustics & speech privacy – international perspectives started. Chaired by William Cavanaugh , David Sykes and Kerstin Persson Waye, the session provided an overview of emerging policies around the world.

Some of the conclusions are that the development of acoustic standards and guidelines for Healthcare facilities is really accelerating. David Sykes of ASA highlighted several waves of technological, economical and social trends that are responsible for that.

Continue reading "This morning's summary - speech privacy in healthcare premises" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:04 PM | Permalink

From June 29th till July 4th 2008 “Acoustics’08 Paris” will be held in the Palais des Congrès in Paris. The conference is being organized by the ASA, the EAA and the Société Française d’Acoustique (SFA). It will bring together experts from all fields of acoustics from around the world.

Room acoustics in schools, offices AND health care facilities

Besides sessions on room acoustics in schools and offices, this conference will also strongly focus on sound in Health Care facilities. Erica Ryherd (Georgia institute of Technology) and Marc Janssen (Ecophon Group) will chair one of the health care related sessions.

Continue reading "HAVE YOU REGISTERED FOR ACOUSTICS'08 IN PARIS?" »

Posted by Marc Janssen at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sound levels in Health care premises have increased dramatically over the years, negatively affecting patient recovery as well as staff performance. Ecophon has recently published a knowlegde booklet on the sound envrionment in Healthcare premises, called Care about Sound. It describes the current noisy situation, lists relevant research and demonstrates through cases how well planned sound environments benefit the patient care in the end. Starting with an international version in English, other languages are planned to follow later this year.

To order a copy please contact your local Ecophon representative

Posted by Marc Janssen at 1:32 PM | Permalink

Hospitals are extremely noisy, and noise levels in most hospitals far exceed recommended guidelines. The high noise levels, as well as peak noise levels in hospitals, have serious impacts on patient and staff outcomes.

Research suggests that environmental interventions may be effective in reducing the noise levels in hospitals and improving the acoustical environment. Key interventions include a.o. installing high-performance sound-absorbing ceiling tiles.

These are just some of the conclusions from the recent paper called "Sound Control for Improved Outcomes in Healthcare Settings" by Anjali Joseph and Roger Ulrich (both Center for Health Systems and Design). If you want to read more about noise control through absorbing ceiling systems and other measures please read the full article