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A preliminary analysis of the sources of noise in an open-plan neonatal intensive care unit
Author(s)
Date Issued
January 1, 2017
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
The acoustic environment in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) is known to be hardly conducive to the treatment and development of preterm infants. Many studies report the results of acoustic surveys in NICUs, where some studies also investigated the sources of noise. These studies employed a human observer to annotate the noise sources on site, which unfortunately makes the results vulnerable to the Hawthorn effect. Furthermore, most noise source surveys were carried out for a few hours at particular times of day, thus revealing only part of the complete situation. To overcome the shortcomings of the previous studies, the noise sources in an open-plan NICU were investigated in the current study by an offline annotation of 24-hour continuous audio recordings made inside and above an incubator. The results showed that a total of 17 noise sources could be identified in 30159 intervals that occupied 22.1/24 hours, where up to 7 concurrent sound events were present in each interval. The events produced by staff and non-patients’ activities (excluding speech) were counted most frequently, 12878 times, and the alarms from life-supporting/-monitoring devices were present for the longest accumulated duration, 19.5/24 hours. Noise level data were also extracted from the calibrated recordings and analyzed in synchrony with the annotation results. The results showed that the strongest noise source was the patient’s own noise (e.g., crying) inside the incubator and the other patients’ noise above the incubator. Excluding the patient’s own noise, the alarms and the non-patients’ activity noises contributed to the total acoustic energy inside the incubator by 43% and 42% and above the incubator by 53% and 26%, respectively. It is suggested that a better management of alarm systems and an appropriate staff education may improve the acoustic environment in NICUs.
Citation
Inter Noise 2017 46th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering Taming Noise and Moving Quiet, 2017-January, 2017