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Abstract
Nurses do not always have visual access to their patients in hospital corridors. During these times, lack of proper monitoring of auditory cues can potentially delay nurse response time and disable early detection of complications. Particular acoustic characteristics of hospital sound environments such as reverberation time can be highly detrimental to nurses’ sound-based task performance. In previous studies, the effects of surface materials on temporal characteristics of reverberant corridor sound environments have been studied. However, little is known about the relationship between floor-plate shapes and temporal characteristics of reverberant corridor sound environments. The main goal of this study was to statistically examine the relationship between floor-plate shape and temporal characteristics of reverberant sound environments in inter-connected nursing unit corridors by conducting floor-plate shape analysis, acoustic simulation studies and field measurements. Overall, the findings suggest the potential effectiveness of acoustic simulation programs in predicting the temporal characteristics of reverberant sound environments in inter-connected hospital corridors. Based on the acoustic simulation analysis, reverberation time was significantly correlated with two floor-plate shape metrics: visual fragmentation and relative grid distance.
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by Boston Society of Architects. We appreciate the partnership of the Healthcare Acoustics Research team (HART) and would like to specially thank to Tim Hsu and Tim Frank for their generous help during field measurements.