Acoustic Biotopes, Listeners and Sound-Induced Action: A Case Study of Operating Rooms

Abstract

As socio-technological environments shape and direct listener behaviour, an ecological account is needed that encompasses listening in complexity (i.e., multiple listeners, multiple sounds and their sources, and multiple sound-induced actions that ensure the success of a mission). In this study, we explored sound-induced action under the framework of “acoustic biotopes” (a notion of ecological acoustics by Smolders, Aertsen, and Johanessma, 1979 and 1982) in a specific socio-technological environment, i.e., the context of an orthopaedic operating room. Our approach is based on literature research into the topics of environmental psychology and auditory perception and action and in situ observations in healthcare with field recordings, participatory observations, and interviews on the spot. The results suggest a human-centered definition of sound-induced action in acoustic biotopes: Acoustic biotope is an active and shared sound environment with entangled interactions and sound-induced actions taking place in a specific space that has a critical function. Listening in highly functional environments is an individual experience and is influenced by hearing function, physical position and role in an environment, and the task at hand. There is a range of active and passive sound listeners as a function of their attentive state and listeners as sound sources within the acoustic biotope. There are many different sound sources and sound locals in socio-technological environments and sounds have great potential to serve critical information to operators. Overall, our study provides a holistic, multi-layered and yet a listener-centric view on the organisation of complex spaces and the results can immediately be applicable for rethinking the acoustic environment for ORs for better listening and sound-induced action.

A study on the influence of dominant sound sources on users’ emotional perception in a pediatric dentistry clinic

“…The field survey of the soundscape and emotional perception in the pediatric dentistry clinic was divided into two parts, i.e., interviews and field questionnaires. According to the concept of acoustic biotopes ( Özcan et al, 2022 ), a dental clinic is viewed as a biotope, with species including healthcare workers and young pediatric patients. Therefore, based on different audience groups, respondents in the pediatric dental clinic were categorized into two groups for the interviews conducted in Chinese: healthcare workers and young pediatric patients; young pediatric patients were interviewed and surveyed with the accompaniment of their family members.…”

“…The age range of the pediatric patient sample in this study was controlled to be between 0 and 11 years old (the interview outline is shown in Table 1 ). What people hear depends on who is listening, and the way people listen can affect the likelihood of interacting with different components of the environment ( Özcan et al, 2022 ). Therefore, based on the results of the interviews, the pediatric dental clinic includes 10 types of sound sources.…”

Disturbed Sleep: Estimating Night-time Sound Annoyance at a Hospital Ward

“…One of the main causes of the problem is that hospitals offer shared acoustic spaces (i.e. acoustic biotopes) in which multiple actors (patients, visitors, and healthcare providers) and multiple objects (healthcare devices, medical tools) interact and contribute to the overall quality of the acoustic environment [9]. Such shared spaces also have different functions, which can change over the time of the day.…”

“…For example, a patient room should be conducive to caregiving activities as well as resting and sleeping. Because of the ambiguity of its functions, it may be difficult to organise the acoustic environment or control the sound-producing events, especially because nurses are often unaware of the sonic consequences of their and others' actions [9]. Thus, mitigating the problem of sleep disruption by sound is an ongoing effort in the field of sound-driven design for healthcare [10] [11].…”

Surgery Sounds and Patient Emotions: The Impact of Sounds on the Emotional Experience of Patients in Operating Rooms

“…Noise in Operating Rooms (OR) is a widely acknowledged issue and listening in the OR is an active but also a collective experience in an acoustic environment which patients and OR staff members coexist [1]. In orthopedic surgeries specifically, medical staff has an average exposure to excessive noise of 19-37 minutes and the equivalent sound pressure can be around 66.5 dBA [2] with peaks reaching 120-140 dBA [1].…”