77: Reduction of Noise in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Using Sound-Activated Noise Alarms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sound levels in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) often exceed recommendations. An adverse sound environment may have harmful effects on newborns. Previous studies have explored strategies to reduce sound levels in the NICU but few have focused on direct audit and feedback methods. To determine if the use of noise alarms, providing direct audit and feedback, reduces sound levels in a level 3 NICU. SoundEar® noise alarms were installed in each of three patient care areas (blue, yellow and green pod) and at a central desk area in a level 3 NICU. The alarms continuous measured sound levels and provided direct audit and feedback. Above a set threshold the alarm displayed red, within 5 dB the alarm displayed yellow and at more than five dB below threshold the alarms displayed green. Sound levels were measured for two months with the noise alarms visible but not providing any direct audit and feedback (i.e. always displaying red). The threshold was then set to 50 dB, a level which (based on previous data) could discriminate quiet from noisy periods in our NICU. Sound data was collected for another two months. Data was adjusted for measures of unit activity. The adjusted sound levels pre and post direct audit and feedback were compared. The percent of measured sound levels below 45 dB, 50 dB and 55 dB post intervention and the difference from pre-intervention are shown below in Table 1. The largest effect was a statistically significant increase in the percentage of sound levels below 50 dB in all three patient care areas. The desk area did not show a change. The percentage of time where sound levels were below 45 dB and 55 dB was also not significantly altered by direct audit and feedback. Noise alarms providing direct audit and feedback seem effective in reducing sound levels in patient care areas. Conversations may have moved to non-patient care areas, preventing a similar change there. The time below 45 dB did not change likely due to non-modifiable background noise levels. The lack of effect for 55 dB is possibly due to the unit being below this threshold the majority of the time pre-intervention.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".