Improving patient recovery with a quiet hospital environment

Research has shown that patients tend to recover more slowly in a noisy hospital environment, with the cacophony of alarm sounds, foot traffic, public address announcements and emergency responses making it difficult for patients to get the all-important sleep they need to aid their recuperation.

So many of the essential medical devices used at the patient’s bedside feature alarms and constant beeping. These alarms can startle patients and create stress while busy nurses and doctors become immune to them, which often creates delays in responding to alarms or switching them off.

While this means that patients in hospitals are in the best environment for medical attention and expertise, they are in the worst place for peaceful rest. Rest and recovery are vital for most hospital patients, so a quiet environment without major noise pollution can significantly improve patient comfort and even potentially fast-track certain recovery aspects.

Patients are not the only concern when it comes to heavy noise pollution in a hospital environment. Medical staff need to constantly be on high alert and have elevated levels of concentration for every task. The noise coming from all angles in the work environment can encourage a loss of focus or even cognitive overload for some medical staff. Minimising the impact of overwhelming hospital noise without sacrificing essential hospital communication will give patients the best chance to recover while ensuring medical staff are in a productive work environment.

Hospitals should look to avoid unnecessary alarms and sending messages to those who don’t need to hear them. With sophisticated communication technology, healthcare workers can focus their attention where it’s needed without being distracted by unnecessary messages and alarms. This has the added benefit of letting these professionals focus more fully on the patients in front of them, delivering a better experience for both the worker and the patient.

It can be a balancing act to make sure healthcare workers don’t miss important messages while avoiding excessive noise. In emergency situations, lives could be saved by effective communication, whether that’s via public address systems, personal communication devices or other methods. In these cases, clear communication is far more important than maintaining a quiet environment. However, it is possible to achieve strong, clear communication in emergencies without disrupting patients with loud alarms and announcements.

Direct communication helps to ensure doctors, nurses and other health professionals get the messages they need while lessening the stress and disruption to patients. Hospitals are already a high-stress environment for medical staff, who can find that excessive noise leads to exhaustion and irritability. One of the leading causes of this is ‘alarm fatigue’ — research shows between 72 and 99% of clinical alarms are false alarms. Direct messaging to relevant staff can help to reduce alarm fatigue by only communicating essential information to the people who really need it, rather than making a blanket call for help.

The desensitisation to alarms is an increasingly critical safety issue in current clinical practice. It occurs mainly because the devices have ‘cried wolf’ too often. Care workers on the front line experiencing alarm fatigue can take longer to respond to critical alerts in an emergency, which can be fatal in a worst-case scenario. If these messages were delivered directly, with an identifiable custom ringtone, fewer alerts would be missed and response times would increase.

Having a smart device running relevant, purpose-built, healthcare applications will help staff to communicate about patients, emergencies and hospital updates without adding stress to patients. Using this technology for emergencies makes sure that staff are readily available without provoking panic, concern or disruption among patients due to continual alarms and beeps.

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