Originally published December 18 2005
Johns Hopkins study uncovers the impact of hospital noise on patients
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Decibel levels inside hospitals have risen to 72 since 1960, and researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that the increased noise, due in part to the many technological advances of the last half century, has resulted in stressed hospital workers and disturbed healing processes.
Victorian hospitals are now museums, but a new study has found that Nightingale's observation is even more accurate for the high-tech hospitals of today.
As the decibel levels in hospitals have steadily increased during the last five decades, so has the suffering of patients and staff.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University took a look at the problem of noise in hospitals and found that the contemporary version of the "cruel abuse of care" translates into stressed workers, raises the risk of medical errors because instructions aren't properly heard, and can even interfere with healing and recovery.
Add to these problems the results of two other recent studies that link excessive noise to a higher risk of heart attacks and high blood pressure, and our cacophonous environment begins to look like a serious public health problem.
The study began when a vice president at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore asked Eileen Busch-Vishniac and James West --- not medical doctors but acoustics experts --- to evaluate the noise levels in the pediatric intensive care unit and make recommendations to address the problem.
The team made 24-hour sound measurements of every area, including operating rooms and patient waiting rooms, and developed a "sound picture" of the environment.
The Johns Hopkins researchers first performed an analysis of all the previous research on the subject and found that in 1995 the World Health Organization had issued noise guidelines for hospitals that put the preferable noise levels in patients' rooms at 35 decibels.
A University of Michigan study in the Archives of Environmental Health suggests that working in loud places can increase blood pressure levels.
To lessen the blasts from the pages announced over loudspeakers, the pediatric ICU staff was given small, hands-free personal communicators.
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