Noise-abatement effort starts with taking samples
Noise-abatement effort starts with taking samples
Overlook Hospital in Summit, NJ, partnered with a team of noise-abatement experts led by One-Jang Jeng, PhD, to manage Overlook’s noise levels, which are similar to those of most hospitals nationwide. Jeng is a professor in the Occupational Safety and Health Engineering Program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.
He describes the challenge that every hospital faces: "In health care environments, the relative noise levels are more problematic than the constants. When the volume exceeds 60 decibels [dB], people notice it, so we’re trying to fight with the spikes [unexpected jumps in sound levels]." To put this into perspective, Jeng explains that the sound of two people talking over a five foot distance is 60 dB.
He concedes that the best shot at noise management is to start with a building that was designed right the first time. Still, aged facilities are not hopeless. He notes that you’ll realize the biggest payoff if you first analyze the sources of noise and then apply the fixes.
"In hospitals, however, we don’t know when noise will come up," he adds. "So our research challenge at Overlook was to find a way to sample noise for long periods."
James Espinosa, MD, FACEP, FAAFP, chairman of the emergency department and co-chairman of Overlook’s noise reduction task force, describes Jeng’s sampling and reporting solution as elegant. "It led us to a huge set of breakthroughs in our ability to understand and capture noise," he notes.
The method captures continuous digital readings as well as actual recordings of sounds. It’s reproducible in just about any setting. Jeng shares the highlights below:
• Choose the area and time interval to be monitored for four to eight hours, for example. This might be a nursing unit, an operating room, or the desk at the emergency department.
• Set up a noise meter that will digitally display sound levels.
• Next to the noise meter, set up a video camera with the lens positioned to shoot the readings on the noise meter. The soundtrack on the videotape will record environmental noise in real time. Your end result will be several hours of data comprising roughly 10 recordings per second.
• To derive a sample, for instance, take 5 data points for each minute. For instance, from six hours of data you will have: 5 data points x 360 minutes = 1,800 data points.
• To find the maximum and minimum levels for each minute, enter the 1,800 data points into a computer program such as Microsoft Excel.
• Chart the minute-to-minute maximums and minimums as lines on a graph.
• Identify spikes visually by looking at which minutes have large differences between the lines.
• To analyze the spikes, play back the videotape of that time segment. Listen to the recorded noise as you view the shots of the meter. Perhaps, you’ll identify it as the arrival of a woman in labor or a little boy with a bad earache.
The method is unobtrusive, unbiased, and inexpensive. As Jeng points out, "You don’t have somebody standing around with a sound meter and a clipboard."
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