Environmental characteristics of a neonatal intensive-care unit.

An increasing number of intervention programs are designed to ameliorate the "sensory deprivation" of hospitalized premature infants. However, observation of the premature infant's hospital environment every 15 min for 5 24-hour periods indicated that acoustic stimuli were clearly audible in over 95% of the observations, infants were handled during more than 10% of the times they were observed, and illumination levels were always sufficiently high to permit easy visibility. Analysis of the nature of this stimulation suggests that premature infants may suffer from an inappropriate pattern rather than an inadequate amount of stimulation.