Articles

<b>Objective</b>: To investigate the status of the acoustic environment of a typical Chinese pediatric emergency care department in a time series and identify the relationship between noise levels and factors such as crowd density and movement. <b>Methods</b>: A descriptive study was designed based on a multi-loci time-series method. We measured three loci under three variable settings: the decibel value, observation volume, and emergency care volume. <b>Results</b>: The noise levels of the three loci were significantly higher than the internationally recommended levels, exceeding rate reached more than 86.3%. The 24-hour mean map of the three loci showed similar fluctuation patterns, all of which had two peaks at approximately 10:00 AM and 16:00 PM. <b>Conclusions</b>: The daytime and nighttime noise levels were well-fitted by cubic functions with different coefficients. It is suggested that crowd density and movement may play important roles in noise mean fluctuations, which can be optimized to ensure a satisfactory environment in a pediatric emergency care department.