Contribution
Assessment of factors affecting speech in ICU wards
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Hospital wards and ICUs are environments of unique acoustical demands. Rooms with unfavourable acoustic conditions can prolong patient recovery, contribute to workplace stress for healthcare professionals and disrupt communication in an environment where precision and effectiveness is crucial. Alongside this, the issue of speech privacy and confidentiality are of equal importance. This project investigated room acoustic metrics including reverberation time (T20), clarity (C50), and the speech transmission index via impulse response measurements in a laboratory furnished to resemble an ICU ward, from which factors affecting speech in ICU wards may be assessed and presented. A total of 12 treatment setups were tested including ceiling tiles, wall absorbers, and different screen types. Given that ICU wards have characteristics of ordinary rooms yet function as workplaces similar to open plan offices, the spatial decay of speech (D2,s) from ISO 3382-3 was also evaluated.With absorptive ceiling and wall treatments, the acoustic conditions, particularly the speech intelligibility and reverberation times were much improved. With the addition of the ceiling alone the T20 requirements of BR18 were achieved for all screen types, with the wall panels contributing further improvements. However, none of the tested setups would be classified as “good” under ISO 3382-3.