Photo credit: Anna Shvets
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
Scientific Reports, a publication within the UK-based science journal Nature, put out an article about sound in the intensive care unit. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the ICU the researchers studied, at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, was too noisy.
Anyone who has been a patient in a hospital or who has visited a friend or family member in a hospital knows that these facilities are noisy. Announcements are made over the public address system. Carts and gurneys clang as they roll down the hall. Hospital workers of all sorts shout to each other. And of course, the bedside alarms for pulse, oxygenation or an IV that isn’t infusing are constant interruptions.
Noise is a problem in American hospitals as well, being the leading patient complaint on Medicare patient satisfaction surveys. Some hospitals have reported successful attempts to reduce ICU noise, especially at night. Hospitals don’t have to be noisy, either.
Noise disrupting sleep is especially hazardous to health, but that research is only for chronic nighttime noise exposure. I haven’t found any published reports of short-term sleep interruption and its effect on hospital patients. I’m reluctant to say that “everyone knows that a good night’s sleep is important to recovery from illness or surgery” until that is demonstrated in a randomized controlled trial, but a quieter hospital — even if only so patients and their visitors can converse — will be a better and healthier hospital for all.
