Sound Health: How Tranquility Rooms Can Heal Caregivers

Image © Burst.

In hospital environments, staff can be inundated with noise—loud sirens, patients in pain, machines beeping—it’s a reflection of policies and regulations creating a dehumanized healthcare experience. But sound—through multisensory environments like the “Tranquility Room” at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C.—can also be healing, by promoting a culture of quietness, enhancing environments not just for patients, but to also care for those who take care of others.

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Sound Health: The Tranquility Room

Tranquility Room at Sibley Memorial Hospital, a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Photo © Wendy Steck Merriman Photography.

Doctors and nurses dedicate their lives to caring for others, but who is caring for them? Recent research makes it clear: healthy, happy caregivers provide better patient care. Yet caregivers’ realities are seldom a symbol of health: long hours, rotating shifts, and physically demanding tasks, set against the background of the sound of someone in pain, the most stressful noise in a hospital setting. It’s no wonder that healthcare workers are at high risk for physical and mental health problems, including musculoskeletal injuries and depression. Long overlooked, the impacts of diminished caregiver health are now coming to the surface.

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Sound Health: How Noise Can Inspire Healing

Did you know that stroke patients working with a music therapist can learn to express themselves through singing, or that music with a beat can make waking easier for those suffering from Parkinson’s disease? I, for one, became more aware of the impacts of sounds, both positive and negative, while attending a sound health event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center and the National Institutes of Health, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts and renowned soprano Renée Fleming, launched this collaboration to explore the connections between music, health, and wellness.

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