{"id":420,"date":"2015-11-18T09:14:50","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T14:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toh.masm.ca\/en\/?p=420"},"modified":"2021-02-17T11:44:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T16:44:37","slug":"shhh-quiet-helps-premature-babies-brains-develop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/uncategorized\/shhh-quiet-helps-premature-babies-brains-develop\/","title":{"rendered":"Shhh! Quiet helps premature babies\u2019 brains develop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quiet time in the General Campus NICU helps babies like Eva Bisson, cuddling with her mom, Sara Bisson, to rest and continue brain development.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re talking loudly in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) these days, you\u2019re going to get shushed.<\/p>\n

The NICU has started a campaign called \u2018Help Us Sleep Healthy,\u2019 or \u201cHUSH,\u201d to promote a quiet environment where babies can sleep.<\/p>\n

Like the Quiet at Night campaign at The Ottawa Hospital, the idea is that sleep helps patients heal. But, for premature babies, quiet time is more about development than recovery.<\/p>\n

Research has shown that, because their brains haven\u2019t quite finished developing by the time they\u2019re born, premature babies are more likely to have developmental delays, autism, cerebral palsy or learning disabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy creating an environment that mimics the womb, we\u2019re protecting brain growth and development,\u201d said Registered Nurse Sarah Henderson, who co-chairs the NICU Developmental Care Committee. \u201cGiving them that quiet time helps decrease the severity and the rate of poor neurological outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, the campaign was rolled out to educate staff and parents on the unit about the benefits of a quiet environment. The unit has a SoundEar as a visual reminder of how noisy the unit is at any given time, and has asked care teams doing rounds to use quiet voices, speak one at a time, and avoid talking right beside the babies.<\/p>\n

The unit has declared 1 p.m. the start of a daily \u2018quiet hour,\u2019 when unit doors are closed and the lights are dimmed.<\/p>\n

Data was collected from the SoundEar for a week in April, and then again for a week in July. The July data showed a 23 percent reduction in the average volume of noise, said Clinical Manager Janet Brintnell.<\/p>\n

To make the campaign successful, said Henderson, team members and families on the unit needed to create an environment where people didn\u2019t feel bad asking others to be quieter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gave each other permission to shush each other, to say, \u2018Hey guys, it\u2019s getting too loud in here. We need to be quieter,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quiet time in the General Campus NICU helps babies like Eva Bisson, cuddling with her mom, Sara Bisson, to rest and continue brain development. If you\u2019re talking loudly in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) these days, you\u2019re going to get shushed. The NICU has started a campaign called \u2018Help Us Sleep Healthy,\u2019 or \u201cHUSH,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}