Noise in the ICU: Terminology, Health Effects, Reduction Strategies, and What We Don’t Know

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

Noise isolation headphones to use in loud environments via Wikimedia Commons

I woke up this morning, as I do every morning now, to the sound of pile driving at a large construction site a block and half away on the Gowanus Canal. It shakes the earth and reminds me of the forges of evil Sauron in one of the Lord of the Rings movies. I once had a dog lose a good bit of hair when there was a pile driver for several months in the lot behind another apartment in Brooklyn.

The negative physical and emotional effects of excessive noise get an occasional mention lately in health reporting, but in New York City or along the remotest forest lane, the forces of quiet can seem to be in rapid retreat before an army of leaf blowers, all-terrain vehicles, diabolically amped-up motorcycles, huge TV sets, garbage trucks, helicopters, and the like.

Lest I sound like a total crank (I do have useful noise-cancelling headphones plus an Android app that offers such choices as white noise, brown noise, burbling creek, steady rain, crickets, and soothing wave sounds), there’s a reason for the preamble. Florence Nightingale herself called unnecessary noise “the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on sick or well,” as is pointed out by the University of Washington researchers who wrote the latest installment of our column Critical Analysis, Critical Care.

2016-11-21T13:04:45-05:00May 16th, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments
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Magnet Hospitals: It’s About the Process, Not the Designation

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

When I had a recent medical emergency, I went to the local community hospital near my home in northern New Jersey. I had been there before for outpatient testing or to the ER with a child and found the care attentive and efficient and the staff friendly and professional. Besides, it was a Magnet-designated hospital, so I was confident that I’d receive good care.

The ancillary staff was wonderful, but I found myself disappointed with the nurses on the acute med/surg unit where I was located. There was no rounding that I was aware of, and they seemed to only show up when it was time to administer meds. Only a few nurses introduced themselves, and only two nurses over three days really engaged me in any conversation. Nurses seemed to respond to call lights only for those patients to whom they were assigned. The unit clerk who promptly answered the call light intercom would say, “I’ll let your nurse know and she’ll be in soon”—when I asked for pain medication, she told me “your nurse is giving report; I’ll let her know when she’s finished.” I waited uncomfortably for more than half an hour.

There were whiteboards, but often the information—especially regarding the date and the name of the nurse—was unchanged from day […]

2016-11-21T13:10:53-05:00January 23rd, 2012|nursing perspective|5 Comments
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Promoting Awareness of Patient-Centered Care

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

October is, among other things, patient-centered care awareness month. At AJN, we’ve been focusing on patient-centered care for some time, most recently by virtue of our collaboration on a series of articles with Planetree, a nonprofit that “facilitates patient-centered care in healing environments.” The first article, Creating a Patient-Centered System, appeared in March 2009; the final article (from which we took the image above) was published in September 2010, and they’re all available in a collection on our Web site. Articles focus on such topics as creating quieter hospital environments and promoting patient access to medical records. We’re excited that this collaboration evolved into a four-part free webinar series supported by the Picker Institute. The final webinar, A Patient-Centered Approach to Visitation, presented by Planetree vice president Jeanette Michalak, MSN, RN, along with Wendy Tennis, BA, and Nancy Jane Schreiner, BSN, RN, will be on October 19 at 1 pm EST. We hope you will register and learn how to facilitate family visitation that meets patient needs. (The Planetree Web site also offers a downloadable toolkit and suggestions to focus attention on patient-centered care.)

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2016-11-21T13:15:25-05:00October 7th, 2010|nursing perspective, patient engagement|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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