“Would you recognize if the hospital noise level was too high? Or would you know what to do to keep it down?

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the average noise level in a hospital room not exceed 30 decibels. But as the authors of a 2012 research letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine noted, “objectively measured hospital noise can range as high as 67 dB in the intensive care unit to 42 dB in surgical wards.” When that happens, patients have trouble getting the rest they need, and they tend to mark hospitals down on HCAHPS scores. Most units are a lot louder than you might realize. Machines, alarms, footsteps on tile floors, pages echoing overhead, cell phones…they’re all part of the cacophony of noises in a typical hospital. Human voices are responsible for creating a lot of the hospital noise, too.” 

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