Noisy hospitals need Rx for quiet as patients rest

Hospitals need a prescription for quiet, and new research suggests it may not be easy to tamp down all the noise for a good night's sleep. Patient satisfaction surveys are packed with complaints that the clamor makes it hard to sleep. Yet remarkably little is known about exactly how that affects patients' bodies—and which types of noises are the most disruptive to shut-eye. So Ellenbogen and researchers from Harvard and the Cambridge Health Alliance recorded different kinds of hubbub in a community hospital in Boston's suburbs to try to find out.