Occupational noise and cognitive performance in a hospital environment

Prolonged exposure to high sound levels can be extremely harmful for the human organism and not restricted to hearing losses. As evidenced by several authors, may lead to physical exhaustion and chemical, metabolic and mechanical changes of the auditory organ. The Portuguese law, consubstantiated, essentially, in the Decree-law no. 182/2006, of 6 September, considers the risk of hearing loss at exposure levels above 80 dB (A). However, the absence of specific legislation for the noise in a hospital environment, justifies the need to adopt tools to assess this risk for health professionals. It was possible then to identify, among the different variables and its modalities (categories in which the variables were divided), strong inter-relational structures, present in the initial data matrix. From the conducted studies, emerge, clearly, strong correlations between the workplaces (open space versus cabinets), the different levels of performance (represented by the different modalities of Score variable) and some of the professions considered in this work.