SPECIALTY SECTION: Crtical Care
The Power of a Quiet Room
By Lisette Hilton
September 20, 2004
All it is, really, is a small room. For most of the day, the same-day surgery unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston uses the room, which is the size of a small bedroom, for interviewing. But for a few hours in the morning, it is a safe harbor — a quiet place where nurses, patients, and families can go to escape the mayhem in the unit.
Karen Bolden, RN, used to go into what the staff now calls the “Serenity Room” when she was caring for patients and feeling the throes of her own chemotherapy treatments. Bolden was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995 and worked through those treatments. It went into remission for seven blissful years until she received a metastatic diagnosis in 2002.
Bolden again worked through the treatment, but this time her colleagues, who were riding the emotional roller coaster with her, decided to find a place within the wide-open area of the surgical unit where they could regroup.
The room was, and still is, a source of strength for Bolden. Her coworkers “did a lot of things like pray for me … which gave me energy,” she says.
Cecile Hannon, RN, BA, who helped to conceptualize and now helps manage the Serenity Room, presented on its potential power at the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses’ meeting earlier this year. Hannon, a staff nurse and team leader in the unit, had gone through Massachusetts General’s clinical pastoral education program and was focusing on doing something to foster the nursing staff’s spirituality. When Bolden and another nurse on the unit were diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses, she knew something had to be done quickly.
About two years ago, Hannon and a few colleagues, including Massachusetts General’s chaplain, the Rev. Ana R. Higbee-Barzola, approached Janet Dauphinee Quigley, RN, MSN, the unit’s nurse manager, about setting aside a room for staff, patients, and families who needed some peace and quiet.
The problem was there really was no space just sitting, waiting to be occupied; so the nurses had to get creative. They looked toward a conference room that was used by the staff for interviews and semi-converted it. The chaplaincy department helped pay some expenses, and the nurses reached into their pockets and into their homes to bring in soothing music, books, inspirational messages, and meditative tools, including a small fountain. Inside the room hangs a poster-size picture of a quilt the nurses made for Bolden, to inspire her through her recovery.
While the staff hopes to get the funding to build a much bigger room used only for the purpose of being a refuge, Hannon says that others contemplating such a room should not be daunted by fears of huge expenses or the size of the project. Rather, they should focus on the aim. “The whole thing is the idea: It’s about being free to be,” she says.
While Quigley does not use the room, she understands why some of the staff felt having it was important. “We’re all getting older, and I think nurses are being faced with some health issues. We’ve had a couple of difficult situations here with young nurses, and the therapies are better, so they’re pushing themselves back to work. They’re trying to prepare patients for the same thing in a positive way, so they need to be up, too. It almost gives them that little place to reflect or even pray,” she says.
Higbee-Barzola has since moved to Arizona and now is chaplain at Chandler Regional Hospital. Her commitment to the room and ways to fund it continues, however. “I feel as if the need for the staff is to have also a sacred space for themselves. Sometimes, administration forgets the people who are working [on the units] are human beings with personal problems from home and with issues that are going on in their lives,” Higbee-Barzola says.
According to Higbee-Barzola, the most important element in putting one of these rooms together is the quiet.
“From time to time, you just need the quiet to just remember you are important, too. In this profession, we just give and give, and we forget that we also need to receive. The room basically is just a place where you can be you,” Higbee-Barzola says.
Bolden, whose symptoms from the disease are at bay, says it takes only minutes to feel the power of the quiet in the room.
Hannon, who uses the room daily and opens it for others, says, “It allows me to kind of step aside from the frenzy of the day and regroup within myself and to connect to the higher power that’s out there. It renews me. The gist of it is that we believe care for the caregiver translates to better care for the patient. And I believe that when you’re able to replenish yourself, you’re able to give more to others.”
Lisette Hilton is a freelance health care reporter who specializes in news for nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and other allied health professionals.