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영어

This study was performed to find out the differences between noise levels of hospital wards and the nurses efforts for noise management in some general hospitals. The hospital wards selected were the intensive care unit(ICU), the emergency room(ER), the nursery room(NR), the internal medicine(IM), the general surgery(GS) among the 5 general hospitals located in Seoul. The data were collected from August 3 to September 13, 1999 through questionnaire survey and noise measurement in each nursing station of hospital wards. Data analysis was done by SPSS 8.0 package among the 305 questionnaires and 24 hours monitored noise levels. Frequency, Chi-square and ANOVA test were used.

The study results were as belows:

1. The noise level measured by 24 hours monitoring survey were exceeded on the standard limit in all the hospital wards. Data also showed that noise levels were significantly different in each ward among the three shifts working duties.

2. The subjects were all female nurses. They were mostly working in the ICU ward(28.9%). They were 26∼30 years old (43.9%), junior college graduates(57.0%), working for 1∼5 years(55.1%) as staff- nurse(85.6%). There were no significant differences between hospital wards and general characteristics of nurses.

3. The noise levels perceived by nurses were regarded as 'Highly noisy'(56.4%), especially during the 11:30 and 15:30 (30.2%) o'clock. Data also showed that noise education was not ever given to nurses(89.9%). Nurses also responded that they hardly put an effort to reduce noise level(54.8%). However, there were significant differences between wards and noisy working time, experience of noise education and level of effort for noise reduction.

4. Nurses also perceived the ventilator alarm and EKG-alarm as the most disturbing sounds in the ICU, human voice and telephone ringing in the ER, human voice and EKG-alarming in the NR, human voices and telephone ringing in IM and GS both wards respectively in order. There were significant differences between hospital wards and noise making factors.

5. Nurses were shown that they regarded highly 'Sound reduction of the human voice', 'Careful handling on medical instruments', and 'Immediate appliances on alarming materials' as the practical method for noise management. There were significant differences between hospital wards and behavioral practical efforts for noise management.

According to that results, the statistical differences were shown in the 24 hour monitored noise levels in each ward. Also, nurses perceived the noise severity differently and they approached variously on the practical efforts for noise reduction in each ward. Thus, author thinks that concrete and systematic endeavor will be necessary for noise reduction and management in hospitals for better working and healing environment for both of patients and staffs.