They did a feature piece on local news this week on a noise reduction project at a downtown St. Paul hospital. Their aim, to reduce ambiant noise for a more restful atmosphere for patients.
I am well acquainted with this concept from my working days. The community hospital where I worked was the first hospital in the country to build circular nursing stations, an innovation in 1950's. This design saved nurses steps and made it easier to observe patients. You could visually see them more easily and also hear if a frail older person was getting out of bed without calling for help. You could hear a weak cry for help. The downside, all the noise from the work station was heard by the patients. We worked hard to reduce noise ridding ourselves of noisy ice machines on the circle, getting plastic chart holders that didn't clank like metal ones when they were put away, and banishing the addressograph stamper. It was replaced by peel-off stickers to mark pages on charts with pt. names. Eventually the inner circles were retro-fitted with plexiglas to keep the conversations and ringing telephone noises from disturbing patients.
When I saw the piece on the "Yakity-Yak" alarm installed on this hospital's circular nursing units I was interested. They showed a contraption that looked like a semaphore traffic light with displays of green, yellow and red lights. No explanation necessary here. Then the person demonstrated what happened when the noise level rose to the red level. As she clapped her hands loudly in front of the device it set off a "red" light. An audible alarm sounded that was not unlike a wailing ambulance siren. Really it did. I laughed. That must be helpful in the midnight hour. The nurses get too noisy and a wailing alarm alerts them. Patients must love it. You can't make this stuff up. Truth is stranger than fiction.
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