Purpose of Review

The present review aims to highlight the noise effects on the patients’ well-being and by inference on their recovery, during their hospitalization, and also the effectiveness of applied interventions to reduce noise in the health care environment.

Recent Findings

Key findings reported in relevant studies and conducted during the last 4 years are as follows: (a) noise continues to be above guideline values in health care facilities; (b) noise can disturb the sleep of the patients, can affect their rest and the communication between patients/staff/visitors, and finally can affect the staff effectiveness; (c) interventions to reduce the noise are promising but not well proven; and (d) the derived conclusions about the relationship between noise and the healing process are made indirectly and not by measurable patients’ physical parameters.

Summary

The pathways that theoretically connect noise and the healing of the patients are numerous and still unclear. An extensively examined pathway infers that noise can disturb sleep and thus may prevent the patient’s recovery. Other pathways that relate noise to the recovery of the inpatients remain unknown, such as the aggravation/degradation of measureable physical parameters or the re-hospitalization due to noise, or the effect of the low-frequency noise. A protocol to conduct noise monitoring is required, as well as validated questionnaires, to examine the inpatient’s subjective perceptions for their acoustic environment. This may lead to comparable results among the relevant studies and hence to robust interventions for the improvement of the noise environment for hospitalized patients.

中文翻译：

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噪音对患者康复的影响

审查目的

本综述旨在强调噪声对患者的健康的影响，并通过推断他们在住院期间的康复情况，以及应用干预措施在医疗保健环境中降低噪声的有效性。

最近的发现

在相关研究中报告并在过去四年中进行的主要发现如下：（a）噪声仍然高于医疗机构的指导值；（b）噪音会扰乱病人的睡眠，影响病人的休息和病人/职员/访客之间的沟通，最后影响员工的工作效率；（c）减少噪音的干预措施是有希望的，但没有得到充分证明；（d）关于噪音与愈合过程之间关系的推论结论是间接得出的，而不是通过可测量的患者身体参数得出的。

概要

从理论上讲，将噪声与患者的康复联系起来的途径很多，但仍不清楚。经过广泛检查的通路可以推断出噪音会干扰睡眠，从而可能妨碍患者的康复。将噪声与住院病人的康复相关的其他途径仍然未知，例如可测量的物理参数的恶化/恶化或由于噪声引起的重新住院或低频噪声的影响。需要进行噪声监测的协议以及经过验证的调查表，以检查患者对声学环境的主观感知。在相关研究中，这可能会导致可比的结果，从而为改善住院患者的噪音环境提供强有力的干预措施。