Quiet Time Program in Hospitals Medical Professionals

Quiet Time Program in Hospitals

Medical professionals and healthcare practitioners have practiced and committed their profession to one ultimate goal: to ensure that patients' health state would improve from worse to better. In the hospital setting, a myriad of factors operate and influence patients' perception of the quality of care they received during their confinement. There exists both physical and social factors -- external factors that result to either the worsening or continued improvement of the patient. The hospital staff and medical practitioners, and the kind of interaction between staff and patient make up for the social component of the hospital environment. Physical factors, meanwhile, include ambience, cleanliness and noise level of the hospital, which form part of the hospital's physical environment and inevitably, factors that lead to the determination of patients' improvement and perceived quality of care received in the hospital.

The role that physical environment, particularly noise level, plays in patient care can be further and specifically explored through research. In fact, Gardner's (2009) study on the development of a "quiet time intervention" implemented in hospitals for patients provide a different kind of dimension in evaluating quality of patient care and satisfaction with the hospital in general. In the study, Gardner developed and implemented the "quiet intervention program," wherein Australian patients in acute care settings were profiled and evaluated based on their reception of the program. Further, the study tested the effectiveness of the program in improving the patient's health condition, specifically in the acute care setting. Gardner's program shall be the primary measure from which patient health improvement, patient's perceived quality of care given to him/her, and patient's overall satisfaction will be evaluated and interpreted.

Given this important finding in Gardner's study, the proposed research study shall also focus on extant literature on the same topic: quiet time intervention programs in hospitals. Further, the review of literature shall 'deconstruct' and 'reconstruct' Gardner's framework to identify specific variables that will comprise this program. These identified variables will then be evaluated, selected, and be used as a measure that will help establish (or disprove) the effectiveness of the quiet time intervention program (Fontana, 2010, p. 79).