Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth hospital 'too noisy' for patients and staff

Glasgow's flagship hospital is "too noisy" for patients and staff, it's claimed.

NHS bosses are to spend £2mil­lion to cre­ate a less stress­ful envir­on­ment at the Queen Eliza­beth Uni­versity Hos­pital (QEUH) and are seek­ing an expert to intro­duce improve­ments throughout the £842mil­lion build­ing.

NHS Greater Glas­gow and Clyde (NHSGGC) also hopes to reduce noise levels in other hos­pit­als, includ­ing the Royal Alex­an­dra in Pais­ley.

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Appeal­ing for applic­a­tions for the post, the health authority explained that first impres­sions, feel­ings of inclu­sion and the cre­ation of thera­peutic spaces that help to reduce anxi­ety are cru­cial for hos­pit­als.

It added: "Hos­pit­als by their nature are noisy places due to the num­ber of people within a rel­at­ively small space, and the sur­faces tend to be hard and seam­less so as to be eas­ily cleaned.

“This cre­ates a noisy and stress-indu­cing envir­on­ment." It asks: "What design meas­ures could be used to soften these sounds?"

The health board admitted that all five acute hospital sites in the NHSGGC area were subjecting patients and staff alike to a similar “noisy and overwhelming environment”.

The health board’s plan fol­lows a study in the Brit­ish Journal of Nurs­ing in 2016 which found excess­ive noise in health­care set­tings could induce head­aches, cause irrit­ab­il­ity, pro­long wound heal­ing and increase sens­it­iv­ity to pain.

It repor­ted that wear­ing soft-soled shoes and clos­ing doors to areas with excess­ive noise such as TV rooms could con­trib­ute to improved patient out­comes and a bet­ter work­ing envir­on­ment.

In addition to unacceptable noise levels, a focus group established at QEUH in 2020 to review areas in need of improvement found the entrance difficult to navigate, with an abundance of cluttered “stress inducing” signage.

It added: “The atrium space itself is extremely tall and can feel very impersonal. There is no space that a person can retreat to for a sense of privacy.”

The health board said a similar focus group would be established at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and the findings of both groups shared with the lead consultant.

An NHSGGC spokes­man said: "The £2million is purely an indic­at­ive cost and will be sourced com­pletely through grants and other phil­an­thropic means and will be com­pleted over a num­ber of years as funds become avail­able.

"The project is not restric­ted to the hos­pital entrance at the QEUH and will include the atrium and other pub­lic areas across all of our main hos­pital sites.

"It follows on from other similar successful initiatives across the UK which have demonstrated that the introduction of therapeutic design to these areas positively impacts on recovery time, stress levels, staff retention and overall satisfaction levels.

“High quality public realm spaces and planning are now integral to hospital/heathcare planning and will be core for any new facilities that are planned across NHS Scotland.”

The facil­ity is under­go­ing rolling repairs fol­low­ing a cata­logue of issues since it was opened in 2015.

The spate of prob­lems includes tiles fall­ing off, sewage com­ing up through the floor and black mould growing on walls.

In Janu­ary 2017, blood and fae­ces were found on patient trol­leys and mat­tresses dur­ing an inspec­tion, and in August that year, 10-year-old patient Milly Main died at the hos­pital after con­tract­ing an infec­tion.

Later that month clad­ding was removed after it was found to be sim­ilar to that used in fire-rav­aged Gren­fell Tower.

On sev­eral occa­sions in 2017 and 2018, glass pan­els fell from the hos­pital build­ing and shattered near the front entrance.

A 10-year-old boy died in Decem­ber 2018 after con­tract­ing the fungal infec­tion crypto­coc­cus, which is present in pigeon drop­pings. It was found to be a con­trib­ut­ory factor in his death.

In Feb­ru­ary 2019, a probe alleged ‘wide­spread con­tam­in­a­tion’ of the water sup­ply.

The Scot­tish Hos­pit­als Inquiry has been tak­ing evid­ence to determ­ine how its vent­il­a­tion sys­tem and water con­tam­in­a­tion affected patient care and whether or not a num­ber of deaths could have been pre­ven­ted.

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