Noise Study

1
Noise Study

• Riverview Healthcare
• July 2008

2
Why reduce noise?

• Solicited information from
• Residents
• Staff
• Visitors

3
Solicited Answers

• Calm, peaceful atmosphere
• More of a home like environment
• Comfort to residents
• Less stress and anxiety for residents and staff
• Pertinent information gets disseminated
  accurately

4
Solicited Answers Contd

• Able to accomplish more, less distractions
• Less accidents, less distractions
• More productivity

5
Committee formation

• Certified nursing assistants
• Activity aides
• Housekeeping
• Maintenance
• Administration
• Dietary

6
Solicit information regarding

• Most annoying sounds
• Priority of volume issues

7
Dissemination of information

• Resident Council DNS
• Residents on all six units nursing assistants
• Staff administration
• Family council activities
• Visitors family council

8
Process

• 1. gather information
• 2. identify what to measure
• 3. identify measurable goals
• 4. educate staff
• 5. evaluate results
• 6. identify acceptable resources

9
Results

• Most annoying area of noise
• nurses station near elevator on 2 n/s
• elevator area between subacute and 1n/s
• Loud phones
• Call bells going off
• Shredder machines in the middle of the night
• Other resident t.v.s
• 2n/s under phone speaker in the ceiling,
  generates overhead paging as well

10
Measurable data

• Decibels
• Number of overhead pages in a day
• GOALS
• Reduce decibels by 25
• Eliminate overhead paging

11
Plan of action

• 1. Measure decibels to determine actual priority
  list
• 2. Communicate to staff to raise awareness and
  educate regarding the purpose and goals of the
  project
• 3. all hands on deck to decrease call bell
  rings
• 4. Voicemail to reduce overhead paging
• 5. New phone system to provide voicemail and
  portable phones on med carts

12
Plan of action cont

• Walkie talkies for department communications
• Stop shredding on the floors
• Head phones for resident TVs

13
Decibel measurements

• Under speaker in ceiling when telephone rings (2
  N/S unit)
• 
  91db
• Nurse call stations 3 feet away 84 db
• Under paging speaker 70 db
• Overhead music 62 db
• Shredder 74
  db

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Results

• before after
  
• Speaker 91 68
  26
• portable phones on med carts (able to do after
  new phone system installed) decr volume on
  speaker
• Nurse call 84 84
  no ch
• Paging overhead 70 70 no ch
• (not eliminated)
• Shredder 74 0
  100

15
Overhead paging

• Before replacing phone system
• After implementing walkie talkies
• DATE of pages
• 10/27 18
• 10/28 14
• 10/29 11
• 10/30 9
• 10/31 6
• First shift only

16
Number of pages

• Before noise study 25 30/day
• After walkie talkies 11.6 ave. (42.2
  decr)
• After new phone system 9.2 ave. ( 20.6 decr)
• A total of 62.8 decrease

17
Observations

• Calm, quiet units
• Increase in resident activity participation
• Less resident to resident incidents
• Less aggressive discussions between residents and
  staff members
• Residents are sleeping better and later

18
Financial Commitment

• Decibel machine 99
• New phone system 27,000
• reduced monthly bill by 719/mo.
• Walkie talkies 39/set
• housekeeping
• maintenance
• nursing units
• activities
• Shred It 120/mo
• savings labor 75/day
• no constant replacement of broken machines
  

19
Conclusions

• Achieved goals of 25 reduction of decibels for
  shredder, speaker noise on floors
• Portable phones on med carts have eliminated
  noise, incr communication, customer service and
  efficiency
• 66.6 reduction in overhead paging
• Overhead paging not completely eliminated as of
  yet