News

 

Music Helping Those on the Mend

By Cheryl Iler


Radio: KOMO 1000 NEWS


Critically ill patients may find a hospital intensive care unit to be a sterile and frightening place. But one local nurse is using music to ease anxiety and accelerate healing.

SEATTLE - Critically ill patients may find a hospital intensive care unit to be a sterile and frightening place. But one local nurse is using music to ease anxiety and accelerate healing. Birgit Weeks believes that music can be used as a tool because it can affect patients psychologically, physiologically socially and emotionally. Weeks’ works as a nurse at Seattle's Northwest Hospital.

The music can be heard live, on speakers, or with a special sound pillow. However, she says nurses must be trained in how to apply music correctly. Birgit says music works, but it's not just turning on the knob of your radio. She says health practitioners need to use the assessment tool innate in nursing as an art and science. Birgit uses guided imagery and other modalities along with the music. But she likes to develop a relationship with the patient first before applying the best type of music as an approach to healing.

Along with her work here, Birgit is involved in a research project Musica Humana in Denmark. Musica Humana is spearheading the effort to get hospitals to use music in their patient care. It consists of network of doctors, nurses, and classical music composer Niels Eje. Birgit believes music is an important key to help patients return to a healthy life.
 

The public is invited to hear live healing music at Northwest Hospital's music appreciation week August 7th through the 11th.

For More Information:
www.comforthealing.com
www.musicahumana.com
www.northwesthospital.org

© Cheryl Iler, KOMO NEWS                                                                                 August 5, 2006

 

 

Melody and Medicine

By Cathy Herholdt

August 02, 2005

Amidst the chaos and bustle of the busy lobby at Northwest Hospital in Seattle, the sound of a grand piano lilts through the air like a soothing balm to the ears of visitors, patients and staff. In the emergency room, gentle harp music brings a sense of comfort to those dealing with the stress of their visit. And in patient rooms throughout the hospital, CDs of peaceful tones help calm anxious patients.

Northwest Hospital began taking measures several years ago to incorporate music into the environment, as a benefit for both patients and visitors to the busy medical center.

"The hospital is a very stressful place," explained Vice President of Clinical Services and Chief Nursing Officer Gayle Ward. "Music is a way to help people relax."

Ward was part of a group of nurses and therapists who formed the hospital's Comfort and Healing Committee about four years ago with a simple goal: to improve the environment for those who come to the campus. In addition to beautiful gardens for patients and visitors to enjoy, as well as other measures, the Northwest Hospital Foundation purchased portable CD players so that music could be utilized in patient rooms at any time.

Ward emphasized the importance of involving patients and families in the decision about what type and how much music is used in patient rooms to avoid it becoming an additional stressor. They're able to select music from an extensive collection of donated CDs.

"I truly believe it makes a great difference for patients and their families," Ward said.

A physician who works at the hospital donated the player grand piano for the lobby. Along with volunteer musicians who play the piano periodically, members of the community and visitors to the hospital will occasionally pause to play a song or two, much to the enjoyment of grateful listeners.

Once a week, a harpist volunteers to play in the emergency room. "When the harpist comes, the whole unit settles down," said Ward. "Patients and staff."

In her (non-scientific) opinion of what type of music is most relaxing, Ward says the harp has been universally successful in creating a soothing environment.

Much research has been conducted on the relationship between music and healing. Music has proven effective in reducing stress and anxiety for hospital patients, and even decreasing pain in some situations.

Critical care nurse Birgit Weeks was instrumental in bringing music and other comfort measures into the hospital. Following a particularly difficult day in the intensive care unit in which she had two highly agitated, delirious patients - one who was biting and kicking - Weeks began to think about ways she could help patients remain calm in the noisy, sterile surroundings of the ICU. True to the inherent nurturing quality of a nurse, Weeks pondered, "How could I improve their comfort?"

Having read many articles about the benefits of music on well-being, she began to educate herself on how to best apply music in that setting.

"There's much more to music (therapy) than just pushing a button," she explained. Training nurses and medical professionals on all that goes into using music to aid healing has become her mission.

Since that difficult day in the ICU seven years ago, Weeks has become somewhat of an expert on the topic, having spoken at several symposiums about the application of music in a healthcare setting.

Now, when a cardiac patient, for example, comes into the ICU, she and other nurses prepare for their arrival by setting up a soothing environment, including soft background music. "People are anxious and need help to wind down...and a positive sound environment can help with that," said Weeks, who also uses touch and eye contact to help instill confidence in patients and ensure them they're in good hands.

Weeks said music not only lowers blood pressure and reduces anxiety, but can trigger the release of natural endorphins in the brain that make you feel good.

Earlier this year, Northwest Hospital was chosen as the only hospital in the United States to participate in an international study to test the effects of music on patients in the cardiac catheterization lab. Using special pillows fitted with MP3 players and speakers that play relaxing sounds and music, patients can voluntarily participate in the study, which will examine how music impacts patients' comfort, anxiety and well-being during and after an elective cardiac catheterization procedure.

Three hundred patients are expected to participate in the study, which is also being performed at hospitals in Denmark and Canada, between April and December 2005.

"It's been very effective," said Ward of the use of music in the unit. Cardiac catheterization is a procedure during which patients are awake, with local anesthetic, while doctors look at their arteries. It's a procedure that's known to produce anxiety in many patients, and anything that can aid relaxation is helpful to the staff.

"It definitely makes our job easier if the patient is more relaxed," said Dr. Gary Weeks, director of the cardiac catheterization lab. An anxious or agitated patient diverts the physician's attention away from the procedure.

Dr. Weeks said the music pillows are nice because they allow the patient to hear the music without the use of overhead speakers.

Other ways Northwest Hospital is integrating music into the atmosphere include a jazz band that plays regularly at lunch time and a music appreciation week in August during which patients, visitors and staff can enjoy different musical performances during lunch time.

©Journal Newspapers 2005

 

  

Music as Medicine

By Carol M. Ostrom

Seattle Times staff reporter

Look up "music and healing" and you'll likely hit Web sites in shades of purple, festooned with stars and chat about crystals and other alternative therapies.

Increasingly, though, you'll likely also find some distinctly non woo-woo information sources that cater to those inclined to the scientific method.

Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that music can make you feel good.

But it does take some rigorous science to figure out whether that "feel good" can be measured. And then, science wants to know: Do those measures correlate with any health benefit? Help you heal? Lessen post-surgery nausea and pain? Trigger enough optimism to get you into a post-heart-attack exercise routine?

In the past, music, like clean air or exercise, seemed somehow too ubiquitous or natural to warrant serious study as a health benefit.

Music and Health

The Power of Music report: http://www.thepowerofmusic.co.uk/ Contains mini-reviews of more than 200 studies, articles and books looking at music's physiological, psychological and emotional effects.

AMTA (American Music Therapy Association): http://musictherapy.org/

MuSICA (Music and Science Information Computer Archive): http://www.musica.uci.edu/

The Institute for Music & Brain Science at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital: http://www.brainmusic.org/

Today, new interest in alternative therapies, combined with advances in "cognitive neuroscience" and tools such as the functional MRI, which lets researchers track the brain's blood flow related to mental activities, has spurred researchers to take a closer look at music's neurological effects.

We're Hardwired for Music

At Harvard Medical School's Institute for Music and Brain Science, researchers are studying the effects of music on pain and stress in premature infants, measuring heart rate, oxygenation and respiratory rate.

"What evidence we have in hand really does show that music makes a difference," says the institute's director, Dr. Mark Jude Tramo, a practicing neurologist. But, he adds, there are many questions yet to answer.

Some studies show music can reduce the need for blood-pressure medications after heart surgery and help babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (ICU) gain weight, he says.

Listen (MusiCure can be heard on www.MusiCure.com)

For Tramo, such studies separate hype from science. "It's not going to be that music shrinks your tumor, makes your infection go away," he says.

But our brains are hardwired for music, he says, and our brains' complex response to it might play an important adjunct role in health. For example, by reducing the "acoustic graffiti" that permeates hospitals, music might help reduce fear and anxiety that can hamper healing.

Still, "the cold, hard, randomized multi-center large population, statistically sound clinical trials — that's what's lacking," Tramo says.

"The question a lot of us are grappling with is: Is music a vehicle for a number of things that can make people feel better, such as interpersonal relations or getting rid of (the noise of) beepers and alarms, or is there something inherently in music that has a healing effect?"

Musical Pillows

A study of music's effect on patients is under way at one very high-tech area at Seattle's Northwest Hospital & Medical Center: the Heart Catheterization Laboratory. Here, amid imaging equipment and monitors, randomly selected patients listen through a specially designed pillow to the sounds of oboe, harp and cello, along with bird songs and waterfalls.

In the cath lab, patients are awake as doctors push a long, thin catheter through an artery, typically reached by an incision in the groin. Dye is injected and tracked to show blockages.

Afterward, patients will be asked a series of questions: What sounds did they notice? How do they rate the lab's sound environment? How high was their anxiety during the procedure?

The study also is being conducted at hospitals in Denmark and Canada.

Dr. Per Thorgaard, study organizer and chief physician of anesthesia and intensive care at Aalborg University Hospital in Aalborg, Denmark, says about 400 patients will participate in this study, one of a series he hopes will lead to research into music's role in long-term healing.

The study is one of several Thorgaard has conducted since 1998, when he became concerned that the constant, unfamiliar beeps, whirrs and alarms in intensive-care units were confusing and distressing to patients. "The patient who is in the midst of this chaos gets bombarded, and they can't stand it; they get agitated, psychotic; it develops within a couple of days," he says.

Thorgaard looked for studies about whether music could help patients tune out the environment, but found little of use. He found even less on what kind of music might be best.

"We guessed it should not be Jimi Hendrix or Pearl Jam," he quips. After testing classical composers, he settled on the popular Danish composer Niels Eje.

Thorgaard and his colleagues tested the music on patients, asking them to rate their experience of comfort and pain after leaving the ICU. Music, they found, "was like the best medication we had in the pharmacy."

"Really soothing"

Last month, Janice Johnson was at Northwest for a second heart catheterization and procedure to unblock an artery. The first time, last year, she was tense and stayed that way. Last month, she was tense — until the music began.

"It was such a relaxing piece of music that you just went somewhere else," says Johnson, who found herself transported to a Japanese garden, where the sound of a waterfall transfixed her. She lost track of what was going on in the cath lab — including her back pain, which was worse lying flat, as she had to do on the procedure table. "The music was really soothing," she says.

Prescription: Music

Take advantage of music's ability to change your mood. Try to notice what kind of music helps brighten your spirits, what kind helps you feel relaxed.

Experiment — but don't underestimate the power of music you grew up with. You might never listen to the music you remember from your childhood, but it might be comforting under some circumstances. On the other hand, maybe "new-age" music never occurs to you, but it might prove relaxing. You can check out CDs at the Seattle Public Library to try before you buy.

Practice relaxing to music. A daily 20-minute session with music — and no phones, TV or other distractions — will help "train" your body to relax more quickly.

If you're trying to sleep, don't listen to words. Music without lyrics lets you turn off your "thinking" better, most experts believe.

Match beats to the tempo you want for your activity. At least one small study showed that cancer patients' heartbeats synchronized with a musical beat, with a bit of training. So if you want to work hard, look for fast beats; if you want to relax, don't reach for the rock 'n' roll. Some music experts advise counting beats in the music to help it do the job for you — 120 to 135 beats per minute for fast walking, 126 for step aerobics and 160 for jogging, for example. Dr. Michael Thaut, director of the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University, says rhythm can modulate the timing of firing patterns of neurons in the brain.

The operating room is an "ominous, stark, foreign environment, kind of scary," says Robert Loveland, a retired construction manager who also listened to music during his heart catheterization last month. "You've got four or five, maybe six people circling you in a place that's very foreign to you — it's very unsettling."

Loveland, 66, hopes Northwest makes music a regular feature in the cath lab or other areas where patients are awake during procedures.

Skeptical Doctors

At first, some of the doctors at Northwest were skeptical.

"In medical school, when I trained in the 1980s, the focus was really on science and less on personal issues such as comfort and emotional states of mind and well-being," says Dr. Gary Weeks, a cardiologist. "It's only when you get out in the practice of medicine that you realize that the emotional and non-physical aspects impact the patient's sense of health and well-being."

Studies have shown music can lower blood pressure and heart rate, as well as levels of stress. One, published in 2003 in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, showed that relaxing music after a psychologically stressful task stopped the increase of cortisol, a stress hormone, whereas in silence, the hormone continued to increase for 30 minutes.

Other small studies suggest links with heart rates, blood pressure, respiration, muscle tension, motor responses and skin temperature.

Weeks’ sees a connection. "If a patient leaves the procedure feeling less stressed and more self-confident, they will be more likely to return to a higher level of activity," he says.

"We need to attend to emotional health and not focus solely on fixing plumbing. ... If you only fix the problem but fail to deal with their anxieties, their worries and fears, their sense of frailty — their sense of being at risk — they'll continue to have symptoms of serious illness."

Dr. William Nichols, an anesthesiologist who also works in Northwest's cath lab, says he's intrigued that music appears to reduce post-operative nausea and pain in some people.

Likes the Odds

Looking at "risk" vs. "benefit," he sees an equation he likes: "Nobody has had an allergic reaction to music yet, as far as I know," he says.

For Nichols, it helps that Thorgaard has an international reputation. "He's the big cheese," he says. "Having a guy who is an intensivist, an M.D. doing real research on this, opens the door a lot for a guy like me. He understands science; he's not just a guy who showed up with magnets."

There are still plenty of unanswered questions. For example: Do patients in different cultures react differently to music? Might the type of music greatly influence a patient's reaction? Could that vary from patient to patient? Since patients know they're hearing music, how do researchers control for the "placebo effect?"

The Slow Slog of Science

Like most scientific endeavors, research on music's physiological and psychological effects is proceeding slowly. But intriguing bits of information have been piling up as scientists gain the ability to look more closely at the brain.

Dr. Michael Thaut, director of the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University, says studies, including his 10 peer-reviewed, "major research" papers on patients who have had strokes or Parkinson's disease, show the music and healing connection "is not a fluke or a curious one-time observation, but a stable biological phenomenon."

Music is a "rich" medium to study, Tramo believes, because scientists can get at the "physics" of music, breaking it down into discrete features.

"If you want to understand the human condition, you can't ignore something as essential to it as music," Tramo says.

"If we can understand how it is that music communicates emotion and meaning, if we can understand all the computations the brain has to do to recognize that you're hearing the same melody in a different key ... we're getting fundamental information on how the brain works."

Carol M. Ostrom: 206-464-2249 or costrom@seattletimes.com

Listen to the Music

Sound snippet of Niels Eje's "Fairy Tales," a production of MusiCure in collaboration with the Musica Humana project. This is the music used in the Northwest Hospital Experiment: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/audio/news/health/secretpath.html

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company                                        Wednesday, May 25, 2005

 

Can Music Save Your Mortal Soul?

From NTI NEWS - May, 2005

Music and imagery are greatly underutilized as components of holistic approaches to healthcare, said Birgit P. Weeks and Kathleen Hill. “Our mission is to educate and inspire healthcare professionals to integrate music and comfort measures as a standard of care for use in their personal and professional lives,” said Weeks in a session on Monday.

Sounds of Comfort

There is documented use of music as medicine for the last 3,000 years, according to Weeks, although there is little literature analyzing clinical results. Weeks said comfort and noise are significantly linked. “We come into the world with a scream or a cry, sound. We go out of life with a sigh, sound. What do we want? Comfort in our daily lives. Music and sound are containers. They give us a space in order to express ourselves.”

According to Weeks, music evokes a number of physiological responses, including lowered blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and stress hormones. Listening to music also releases natural endorphins, as well as boosts relaxation and immune cell messengers. Weeks also elaborated that patients find natural sounds and soothing music preferable to the noises of an ICU, which often make patients fearful.

There are a number of benefits to music therapy, according to Weeks, building on the Kolcaba Comfort Theory, which essentially says a sound environment is soothing and comforting and conducive to healing. Music therapy heightens emotional expression and contact with reality, and diminishes depression, fear, anxiety, nausea and vomiting, and pain. Utilizing music therapy to improve patient outcomes restores control to the patient, puts that patient in a healing environment and decreases the length of stay and cost of hospitalization or care.

According to Weeks, studies have shown that patients exposed to music preoperatively have a quicker postoperative recovery and that a half-hour of music therapy daily often shortens the duration of time patients remain on ventilators.

Healing: Unplugged

Weeks also broke down what type of music is most soothing. By mapping sound wave patterns, she discovered the most appealing music is a “genreless” blend of acoustic and electronic sounds that incorporates sounds of nature and appeals to everyone, regardless of musical taste. While music therapy often evokes personal imagery, guided imagery therapy can also be very relaxing for patients, said Hill. Evoking similar responses to music therapy, guided imagery therapy can break the cycle of pain and tension.

A Holistic Approach

Accepting music and guided imagery therapy in a holistic approach to healing allows for the development of a protocol that offers a non-pharmacological, easy, inexpensive complementary medical alternative, said Hill. Weeks and Hill also said these therapies should be used on caregivers as well as patients to promote personal well-being.

“You have to recharge your batteries. You can’t pour from an empty cup,” said Hill. “And if you’re comfortable using it on yourself, you’ll be more likely and more comfortable using it on your patients.”