Quieter and calmer than before: Sound level measurement and experience in the intensive care unit at Erasmus Medical Center

Intensive care units (ICUs) are the ultimate socio-technological environments known for their loud sound levels. Alarms, noise produced by patient support devices, loud conversations, physical interactions with tools and the environment in general contribute collectively to a sound quality generally perceived as low. This paper reports the results from a study conducted inside the old and new ICUs at Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Sound level measurements have been collected continuously for three weeks in several matching rooms inside the old and new ICUs at full operational level at a one-year distance from one another. The results support the idea that changes in architectural layout, procedures, and culture have contributed to a significant decrease of the measured sound levels across all daily shifts, both inside patient rooms and in the nurse stations. We further discuss the results in light of a series of contextual considerations that emerged from interviews with healthcare providers (i.e., nurses and intensivists) who actively worked in both the old and the new ICU.