This excellent story in the Chicago Tribune posits that the din in hospitals might well be bad for your health. Well, duh, you might think. But it’s not just a matter of frazzled nerves. As writer Julie Deardorff outlines:

Unwanted sound wrecks sleep, raises stress levels, induces medical mistakes and contributes to alarm fatigue, which occurs when monitors shriek so often they are ignored or turned off, causing safety issues. 

Figuring out ways to minimize the impact of the bleeps and bloops that have become so much a part of the everyday healthcare experience is a design issue, and the article also details the work of the Healthcare Acoustics Research Team, a group working to improve the average hospital soundscape.

In short, the article is a good reminder of a critical part of the healthcare experience that often gets overlooked. Certainly, it could probably use better solutions than the Yacker Tracker (above), a sound meter that’s more commonly used in kids’ classrooms and which flashes a red light when conditions are too noisy. Installed by a nurse’s station in one hospital, Deardorff reports that, “the device hit red 301 times. Each time, much to the staff’s annoyance, a low-pitched siren went off, adding to the din.” (Not to mention rather undermining the point of the exercise.)