Noise Measurements in the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions’ Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

摘要

Comparing the results of our measurements with those reported in the Goodfriend study, thenoise level in the PICU is well above the range of those measured 40 years ago. We show NCcharacteristics for both sets of data in Figure 5. The bars in the Figure represent thecomprehensive range of data in the eight hospitals for similar locations. The levels of the midrangefrequencies are more than 10dB higher than the previously documented results. While wedo not yet fully understand the source of this additional noise, we can speculate that most is due to the increased demands on HVAC, the ever increasing need for portable bed-side instrumentsas seen in Figure 1, and perhaps also the increased density of patients.