The Investigation of Acoustical Environments in Elderly Mental Hospital

Abstract

Acoustic conditions in hospitals have been shown to influence a patient's physical and psychological health. Noise levels in Beitou Armed Forces Hospital were measured among various times. Sound pressure levels were logged every 30-seconds over a period in different locations: at the nurses' station, in the hallway, and in a patient's room. Results show that current noise level guidelines were exceeded regularly; despite this the surveys showed most patients were not very annoyed with the noise. Additionally, no relationships were found between a patient's gender or age to various noise responses. Overall this study did not find very large changes in sound levels in various time periods and overall patient noise perception will be discussed in the further work. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.