Memoli, G; Dawson, D*; Simmons, D; Barham, R G; Hamilton, M*; Grounds, R M*; Philips, B* (2014) Towards the acoustical characterisation of an intensive care unit. Appl. Acoust., 79. pp. 124-130.

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Abstract

Intensive Care Units (ICUs) can be extremely noisy places, where staff conversation and equipment alarms are often cited as extremely disturbing. These noises are frequently implicated in causing sleep disturbance and may have deleterious effects on patient recovery and staff wellbeing alike. This study presents the first results of research aimed at assessing the acoustical environment in the General Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at St. George's Hospital in London (UK), producing a longitudinal noise map. As a first step towards the deployment of a distributed monitoring system, to be integrated into existing fixtures in the GICU, this work reports some initial acoustic data gathered from the ICU and a laboratory characterisation of the instrumentation, with particular interest in the measurement microphone at its installed location. The impact of the microphone holder on the accuracy of gathered data, the measurement parameter requirements for the distributed system and the possibility of inferring patient and visitors exposure from a fixed measurement position will also be discussed.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	noise monitoring
Subjects:	Acoustics Acoustics > Sound in Air
Identification number/DOI:	10.1016/j.apacoust.2013.12.018
Last Modified:	02 Feb 2018 13:14
URI:	http://eprintspublications.npl.co.uk/id/eprint/6294

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