Documentary Overview: Quiet Room Redesign
Grief experienced by survivors of gun violence often begins in a small hospital room known as the quiet room.
These are nondescript rooms where medical staff deliver life-altering news to families, often following traumatic injuries or sudden loss. In 2022, survivors and students told the story of a quiet room in Boston in a documentary called Quiet Rooms. It represented the emotional gravity of the space, capturing survivors’ accounts of what it felt like to sit in a sterile room at the edge of unspeakable grief. A new film, Quiet Room Redesign, tells the story of survivors getting together to actually transform the room itself.
Created in collaboration with the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute and the Emerson College Engagement Lab, Quiet Room Redesign follows the process of transforming the original quiet room at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The film tells the story of a community taking action, documenting not only what the space represents, but how it can be reshaped when hospitals are willing to listen deeply to the people most affected by it.
The redesign of the room might seem trivial, but it represents a shift in the role that hospitals play in addressing trauma. Dr. Peter Masiakos, co-director of the MGH Center for Gun Violence Prevention, says the process changed how he views not only the space, but his role within it. “I never considered it a place where healing could begin,” he admits. After watching the room be rebuilt, he no longer sees it as the end of a journey, but as “a hand to hold through the next steps of healing.”
Among those guiding the redesign was Chaplain Clementina Chéry, founder of the Peace Institute and a survivor. “In the redesigning process, survivors were not subjects,” she emphasizes. “We were the experts.” Her aim was not to produce another film or academic paper, but to create lasting change, a tangible, physical space that reflected humanity, dignity, and culturally responsive care.
Survivors took the lead in selecting what the room should offer — outlets for chargers, comforting words on the walls in multiple languages, small tactile objects for anxious hands, and materials to guide families after the news is delivered. These small touches are significant. As she points out, “It’s not that people in hospitals don’t care, it’s that they haven’t been taught how to care for us.”
The documentary follows doctors, survivors, and community leaders collaborating to build the room from the ground up. Filmmaker and Emerson College instructor Jesse Epstein describes the effort as “co-creation,” not passive documentation, insisting that “you don’t just make a film and walk away (the original Quiet Room documentary) — the space has to change.” Rather than allowing institutions to dictate what grieving families need, the process reversed the traditional power dynamic. The redesign produced not just a new room, but a new relationship between hospitals and the communities they serve.
The impact has already begun extending beyond MGH. Screenings of Quiet Room Redesign are being held at medical schools around the country, and other hospitals have considered their own redesign. For survivors like Clementina, it’s a sign that their lived experiences are sparking real institutional transformation. “It fulfilled my goal,” she says. “My goal was to make sure that when you’re giving me that death notification, I’m not leaving empty-handed.” And for providers, the shift is just as meaningful. “Providers have told me that it brings them comfort,” Dr. Masiakos shares. “They feel like their words are no longer as blank as the walls once were.”
Quiet Room Redesign invites hospitals to rethink how they communicate with families in crisis. And it invites the rest of us to believe that with strong voices and good leadership, change is possible.