AN INVESTIGATION OF ACOUSTICAL PERFORMANCE IN COMMUNITY HOSPITALS

Abstract

Due to a rapidly ageing population in Singapore, the demand for aged healthcare services will continue to surge in the years ahead. Community hospitals offer immediate and long-term care services for elderly persons who are fit for discharge from acute hospitals but require time to regain functional abilities, hence they tend to be warded longer in these facilities. As a number of community hospitals are being planned in the pipeline, adequate acoustical design should be considered to provide optimal healing environments for better patient outcomes. Past research have been concentrating on the acoustical environment of acute hospitals, hence this study aims to evaluate the aural environment of community hospitals in the local context.

The acoustical environment of the community hospitals studied are characterised by both objective and subjective assessments. Objective measurements entail the usage of several metrics such as equivalent, minimum and maximum sound pressure levels to present the noise levels of the hospitals. They are complemented with more detailed acoustic measures such as noise criterion ratings, spectral content analysis and speech interference levels to fully assess the intricate soundscapes of community hospitals. Additionally, subjective assessments were carried out to understand the perception of occupants with respect to noise in the hospitals.

The results are measured against published guidelines of acoustic requirements in healthcare facilities. The findings revealed that the acoustic performances of community hospitals studied are poor. As a result, recommendations such as relocation of particularly noisy areas away from the wards, engineering and administrative controls were propose to address the noise issues in the hospitals.