Health Promotion and the Use of a Sensory Room

SENSORY ROOM1

Health Promotion and the Use of a Sensory Room

Dana Sartorius

Ferris State University

Abstract

This paper shows how evidence-based research can be used in health promotion. The implementation of a sensory room on an adult inpatient unit in Pine Rest is proposed. The research supports a sensory room as a health promotion tool in a mental health hospital setting. The sensory room has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety and the use of seclusion and restraints. The negative aspects of implementing the sensory room are available space, training of staff, and that it can only help one patient at a time. The advantages outweigh the negatives and show that a sensory room would be a good health promotion tool that can be used for the adult inpatient units at Pine Rest.
Health Promotion Through the Use of a Sensory Room in an Inpatient Psychiatric Setting

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether the strategy of stress management through sensory rooms in an inpatient psychiatric setting is an effective health promotion tool that should be used in an adult inpatient setting. Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services currently utilizes sensory rooms in the child and adolescent inpatient unit. There may be an implementation of sensory rooms in the adult inpatient units at Pine Rest in the future. The reasons for the use of the sensory rooms, its advantages and disadvantages, and evidence of the results of this use will be reviewed to determine whether it is a viable health promotion tool that should be utilized for the adult inpatient units at Pine Rest.

The majority of the patients on the Van Andel North Unit are suffering from anxiety and stress. The lack of coping skills and stress management resources sometimes ends in seclusion or restraints on the unit due to the patient becoming a danger to themselves. The nurses on the unit teach coping skills, administer anti-anxiety medications, and verbally de-escalate patients. These methods are not always successful in calming patients down and helping them to manage their anxiety and stress. The sensory room has been suggested as a further intervention that could be useful to help the patients manage anxiety and stress. “The creation and use of person-centered and trauma-informed tools, such as multi-sensory environments, improve care and promote a recovery focus.” (Champagne, 2004)

It has been observed by this writer on the child and adolescent unit that currently includes a sensory room as part of a patient’s treatment, that the sensory room can positively impact patients. There were several patients observed that requested to use the sensory room to aid in stress and anxiety management. The patients appeared to be more relaxed after leaving the sensory room and would report a decrease in the level of their anxiety. This is the underlying reason the sensory room is being evaluated to determine whether it could have the same positive effect upon the adult inpatient psychiatric patient.

Sensory Rooms

To determine if the sensory room is a valid health promotion strategy, an understanding of what a sensory room is needs to be established. According to Occupational Therapy Innovations (2012), “Sensory Room’ is an umbrella term used to categorize a broad variety of therapeutic spaces specifically designed and utilized to promote self-organization and positive change.” Each sensory room is different and is individualized to the person who is using it at that time. “Sensory Rooms provide an environment that nurtures the body and invites the person to engage in activities that help them to feel good and to focus on strengths and interests and personal self care” (Moore, 2006).

There are a variety of activities and equipment that can be used in this setting. An individual can listen to music, have items like a tension reducing stress balls, use different colored lighting to soothe, and have different textures to touch. There are many other ways the room can be set up to help individualize the sensory room to the person using it. Typically the sensory room is used by the occupational or activity therapist, but with specialized training the nursing staff can also use it as an intervention.

Patients in the inpatient adult units of Pine Rest use the seclusion room as a “quiet or reflection room” to have a place to go that reduces environmental stimuli. “Quiet rooms were paradoxically named “sensory-stripped rooms,” and were intended to promote quiet and restore calm. Unfortunately, they seldom did. Now, hospitals are replacing quiet rooms with attractive sensory rooms for people in treatment to learn what helps to calm them and what does not” (Masters &LeBel,2006). Pine Rest would like to reduce the need for a quiet room by implementing the sensory room to increase the effectiveness of interventions and treatment.

Advantages to Using Sensory Rooms

Some ways in which the sensory room has shown to be a positive health promotion tool are through creating a safe place for the patient to go, encouraging a positive therapeutic relationship between staff and patient, providing a place to teach skills and conduct therapeutic activities, establishing a place where crisis de-escalation strategies can be implemented, and helping to promote self-care and recovery as discussed by Occupational Therapy Innovations (2012). “Moreover, converted sensory rooms create a pleasant, relaxing environment and remove visible, aversive stimuli from settings intended for healing and care” (Masters & LeBel, 2006).

The major advantage of the use of a sensory room is the reduction of the use of seclusion/restraint measures in helping patients to de-escalate in stressful situations. The use of seclusion/restraints(S/R) should be used as a last resort. The patients that go into seclusion or restraints have become a danger to themselves or others. “S/R is associated with high rates of patient and staff injuries and is considered a coercive and potentially traumatizing intervention with no established therapeutic value”(Wale, Belkin, & Moon, 2011). It has become a nationwide goal to reduce the use of S/R in psychiatric inpatient settings. Sensory rooms have been implemented in several sites that are monitoring the use of S/R like New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) hospitals. “Sensory modulation approaches and tools on an inpatient psychiatric service are an emerging best practice. The use of sensory modulation approaches means that the need for more coercive measures such as S/R is reduced”(Wale, Belkin, & Moon, 2011). The results in the Wale, Belkin, & Moon (2011) article support that sensory rooms are health promotion tools that are beneficial in an adult inpatient setting.

Disadvantages to Using Sensory Rooms

One disadvantage to placing a sensory room on the Van Andel Adult North Unit of Pine Rest, would be the loss of space. The current quiet room is also used as a S/R room and for safety purposes must be kept for emergency use. They would have to convert an existing patient room to be used in this manner and this would affect the number of patients that could be treated on the unit. Another disadvantage is that the nursing staff would have to be specially trained how to use the sensory room. It is recommended that the staff that utilizes the sensory room has specialized training. This means more time outside of work would have to be dedicated to training. There would have to be designated trainers and time set up outside of work to complete the training sessions. The high rate of staff turnover suggests that the training could become costly as there are constantly new workers that have to be specially trained. The last disadvantage is that only one patient is able to use the sensory room at a time, excluding group sessions. If there are multiple patients that need some type of immediate intervention to help manage their stress and anxiety, only one will be able to receive the benefits of the sensory room.

Assumptions

In order to evaluate the results of the findings, the underlying assumptions must be identified. The results are based off of the assumption that all patients would benefit equally from use of the sensory room. One of the main goals of the sensory room is to aid in the treatment of all patients and it is possible that some patients may not benefit from the use of the sensory room. It is also assumed that the patients on the unit would be open to using the sensory room. In actuality, there may be some patients who do not wish to use the sensory room and will refuse treatment in this manner.

Results

The findings show that the advantages for implementing a sensory room as a health promotion tool on the adult inpatient unit outweigh the disadvantages. One of the main goals for psychiatric nursing staff is to find interventions to help the patients heal that exclude the extreme measures of S/R. The studies reveal that there is a reduction of S/R through the use of sensory rooms, which is reason enough to utilize a sensory room on the unit. It is also shown that the use of sensory rooms can strengthen relationships between the nursing staff and patients and aid in the interventions currently used by staff. The evidence strongly supports that the sensory room would be a useful health promotion tool in an adult inpatient psychiatric setting like Pine Rest.

References

Champagne, T., (2004).Sensory approaches in inpatient psychiatric settings: Innovative alternatives to seclusion & restraint. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing.42(9), Retrieved from:

Masters, K.J. & LeBel, J., (2006).Seclusion & restraint - Rediscovering pathways to compassionate care.AACAP News.Retrieved from:

Moore, K., (2006). Sensory room for adults in mental health setting.The Sensory Connection.Retrieved from:

Occupational Therapy Innovations, (2012). Sensory room: An umbrella term. Retrieved from:

Wale, J.B., Belkin, G.S., & Moon, R., (2011).Reducing the use of seclusion and restraint in psychiatric emergency and adult inpatient services-Improving patient-centered care.Perm J. 15(2): 57-62.Retrieved from: