The American Hospital Association recommended five strategies to minimize noise in hospitals.
Quiet environments are beneficial to patient healing and recovery, and can help staff by reducing distractions, interference with communication and alarm fatigue, the organization said in a May 5 report. For these reasons, CMS’s Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems uses a “quiet at night” metric as part of its quality measure programs.
Here are five strategies to create a quieter hospital, per the report:
1. Establish quiet hours: New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health established quiet hours for each department, typically from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., and assembled a hospital-based night council led by frontline team members to promote peer accountability. These strategies improved Northwell’s HCAHPS “quiet at night” score by 30 percentile rank points.
2. Develop sleep protocols: Turning off hallway and patient room lights, keeping voices down, and other quieting measures can improve sleep quality for patients. At Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, adopting these measures took the number of patients who said they were “very satisfied” with their sleep quality from 16.67% to 37%.
3. Factor noise control into renovation plans: Plans for new construction and renovations should include noise control strategies, as well as use materials and equipment that minimize noise. Popular features include using acoustic buffers and distancing high-activity areas from patient rooms.
4. Educate and engage frontline workers: Use unit-based huddles to engage and educate frontline team members about quiet efforts and celebrate improvements in quiet metrics.
5. Identify issues during night rounds: Conduct night rounds to pinpoint sources of acoustic annoyance, such as rattling medication carts.
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