Towards achieving the ‘quiet hospital’

The ‘quiet hospital’ is a concept which has long rung true in many a healthcare designer’s mind, with current acoustic design guidance, and the implications of noisy premises on patients and staff, already well documented. How, though, can this concept be achieved in reality, and what steps should the industry as a whole be taking towards reaching this goal? As for any major infrastructure project, healthcare premises design is an holistic process, that requires considerable multidisciplinary input. As such, there are numerous elements to consider early on in the design stage, each of which must comply with the regimes and protocols of the healthcare operator. Early acoustic input on a project is a generally recommended approach, but, beyond this, multidisciplinary designers need to work closely to better understand how their respective design features could impact on both others, and operational regimes, and how best to overcome potential conflicts. It should be noted, at this juncture, that there have been several changes to healthcare design guidance in recent times, with acoustic guidance having seen a gradual evolution from the days of HTM 2045: Acoustics design considerations, to HTM 08-01: Acoustics, and now to the current designation – TDM 4032: 0.6 Acoustics Technical Design Manual. Through each edition and new guidance publication, the common objective has remained – to minimise noise wherever possible, in both critical and non-critical areas of healthcare premises.

Building fabric

The physics of sound are such that one must consider how it is generated in the first place (i.e. understand the characteristics of the sound sources), and which methods can be adopted to attenuate it to within acceptable limits. Noise ingress into healthcare premises has long been considered an important consideration for acoustic designers. For this reason, acoustic data collected during pre-design ambient surveys can provide invaluable information for the design team, in terms of guiding the specification of appropriate design measures to minimise the ingress of environmental noise. In the case of refurbished healthcare premises, there is often a more restricted scope in terms of practical acoustic measures (especially those subject to Listed Building status), but one commonality with new-build developments is the option of optimising glazing configurations. The acoustic designer will usually have, at his or her disposal, a raft of test data for a number of common and specialist glazing configurations. With sufficient acoustic knowledge of the prevailing ambient conditions, and information on the proposed external building fabric, glazing test data can be assessed against internal design targets to yield optimal ingress noise levels.