Influence of Noise on Patient Recovery

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. 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.