Noise and Room Acoustic Conditions in a Tertiary Referral Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital

Cho, Wan-Ho; Jeong, Cheol-Ho; Chang, Ji-Ho; Lee, Seong-Hyun; Park, Moo Kyun; Suh, Myung-Whan; Han, Jae Joon

The noisy room rankings are shown in Fig. 4A , and the most problematic rooms in terms of room acoustics are shown in Fig. 4B . The mean rating regarding noise was 2.2 on a five-point scale, 1 being "not at all disturbing" to 5 being "extremely noisy." The noisiest room was answered to be office/ nurse stations, followed by corridors, patient rooms, and examination rooms. On the other hand, the mean rating for bad acoustics was 2.0, which is equivalent to 'slightly disturbed.' Office/nurse stations are again rated worst in terms of acoustics, followed by examination rooms and corridors. Fig. 5 shows the main noise sources, indicating medical devices, external noise, and talking sound were annoying. The external noise could imply traffic noise and other types of noise, but here it mostly means construction noise due to an underground expansion of the hospital at the time of questionnaire. During the measurement, this construction noise was noticeably reduced according to the hospital staff. Table 1 shows the noise levels in SNUH. At the triage section of ER, LAeq was 55.6 dBA over the first 22 hours, 55.7 dBA over the next 21 hours, and 55.6 dBA for the rest 22 hours. The noise level in the treatment ER was measured to be 54.5, 53.9, and 52.4 dBA for the same time intervals, respectively. The noise level did not vary too much over the three days, so it could be regarded to be representing the noise level in the ER. The time history is shown in Fig. 6 .