科学美国人60秒 医院如何抑制分贝（在线收听）

Hospitals can be extremely noisy places.

医院是非常嘈杂的地方。

In fact, quietness is one of the lowest-rated categories on national surveys of hospital quality. And: "We know the situation is getting worse, rather than getting better."

实际上，在全国医院质量的调查中，安静是最低类的评价。“现在这种情况没有变化，反而变得越发糟糕。”

Ilene Busch-Vishniac, an acoustician and president of BeoGrin Consulting. She talked about hospital noise at a session during the Acoustical Society of America meeting this week in New Orleans.

Ilene Busch-Vishniac是一位声学专家同时也是BeoGrin咨询公司的董事长。本周，在新奥尔良举行的美国声学学会会议上，她谈论了医院噪声问题。

Busch-Vishniac says she and her colleagues have tested speech intelligibility in hospital halls and nurse stations… and found poor or marginal scores across the board.

Busch-Vishniac说，她和同事们在医院大厅以及护士站测试了言语清晰度……发现普遍分数很低或为边缘分数。

"In fact the speech communication and noise problem is so bad that most hospitals in the U.S. have eliminated the ability to phone in pharmaceutical orders—you now must deliver them in writing, because they were getting too many errors."

“实际上，语音沟通以及噪音问题很严重，美国的多数医院已经取消在医药订单中采取电话的行为——现在你必须以书面形式进行递送，以防其中有太多的错误。”

So how to calm the cacophony? She suggests more closed doors, to give patients peace and quiet. Instituting or continuing so-called "quiet times," when nurses interact less with patients, turn lights down, and keep voices low. And installing more acoustic absorbing tiles.

那么如何平复那些不和谐的声音呢?Busch-Vishniac建议到关闭更多的门，给病人创造平静的环境。当护士减少与病人沟通，关灯、降低声音时，这就是营造或者维持了所谓的“安静时光”。同时安装更多的吸音砖。

Finally: she recommends fewer audio alarms. "Now that alarms frequently are gathered centrally at nursing stations, it seems less necessary to have them also ringing at the bedside of patients. And if we could turn those off we could remove some of the most distracting sounds from the environment."

最后：她建议减少音频警报。“现在警报主要集中在护士站，似乎在病人周围总是响起这种声音没有太多必要，如果能将这些警报关掉，就可以减少医院环境中的最让人分心的声音。”

The idea wouldn't be to eliminate all bedside alarms. But to keep only the most essential ones in audio form. And in dampening the decibels, give patients what they really need: rest.

并不是要取消所有床边的警报。只是保留最基本的声音。减少分贝，给病人真正需要的：休息。