Characterizing On-Road Vibrations in Ontario’s Neonatal Patient Transport

Vibration and noise exposure during emergency neonatal ground and air transport are recognized as hazards for the neonate; however, no standardized test environment exists to reliably quantify such exposure with high repeatability. An on-road test was performed to provide a quantitative measurement of on-road vibrations to be used in the development of the standardized test environment. This paper details the ambulance on-road test instrumentation, analysis, and results. On-road findings indicate that neonates experience vibrations that exceed adult standards; that the power spectral density of the acceleration at the neonate contains peaks (at 2 Hz and 9 Hz) in the frequency range humans are most sensitive (1-20 Hz); and that the damped natural frequency of the patient transport system considered is 9.5 Hz.