At Drottning Silvia Children's Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, the use of music has through several years been standard procedure towards the hospitalized children. Preliminary studies with music gave such good results that we now extend the present research study to include 80 children. The music used include MusiCure and for this purpose there have been purchased audio pillows and the newly developed Maysound Music Player. Project leader Stefan Nilsson, pain nurse, started to introduce research with music in the surgical department: "The initiative was initially met with some scepticism from the colleagues. Normally are testing of new drugs accepted without major problems, but it is a little harder to involve music projects in the hospital sector, "says Stefan Nilsson. So far, however, are everyone satisfied with the good results. Several of the children from pre-project reported that it was nice to wake up on the pillow, and when the feedback is mostly positive, the pilot project was a motivating factor for a further development of the study.
The project on Drottning Silvia Children's Hospital are to be conducted over five years. The aim is to enhance the culture of child and adolescent nursing. The 80 children in the study, are aged 7-16 years.
"Music Intervention with MusiCure should not be confused with 'music therapy'. It is a specially designed musical supplement to the existing sound environment designed to stimulate and maintain relaxation and wellness, "says Stefan Nilsson.
Sources:
Barnbladet (in Swedish)
Results from the project at Queen Silvia Children's Hospital, Sweden has December 2009 been published in the International journal “Pediatric Anesthesia”, and the article describe very positive results from post-operative music intervention on school aged children in relation to pain, distress and anxiety.
Article:
“School-aged children’s experiences of postoperative music medicine on pain, distress, and anxiety”
Author and project leader: Stefan Nilsson RN, MSC*†, co-authors: Eva Kokinsky MD, PhD*,
Ulrica Nilsson RNA, PhD‡ and Karin Enskär RN, PhD†
*Department of Paediatric Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Unit, The Queen Silvia Children's Hospital, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Göteborg , †Department of Nursing Science, School of Health Sciences, Jönköping University, Jönköping and ‡Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care and Centre for Health Care Sciences, Örebro University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden
Aim: To test whether postoperative music listening reduces morphine consumption and influence pain, distress, and anxiety after day surgery and to describe the experience of postoperative music listening in school-aged children who had undergone day surgery. Music used in the study: MusiCure by composer Niels Eje.
See link to abstract under: Publications and Articles
"Sleep disturbances appear to be a known problem among children with autism spectrum disorder and other pervasive developmental disorders. The issue addressed, is to a high degree the difficulties this group has of finding peace and rest before falling asleep. On this background, was a pilot project conducted from March to May 2006 on 19 children with ASD in NorthJutlandCounty. The project was intended to investigate whether custom designed music ‘MusiCure’ can shorten the pre-sleep faze, and to investigate how children with ASD respond to MusiCure played back through audio pillows. The study took place in the children's home with the parents as registrants and diary writers" says Susan Gulstad.
Example of feedback from parents with ADHD children:
I heard about the music and went to the pharmacy. I turned it on for the first time when we got home from work/pre-school, and what happened? We both fell asleep.
It is incredibly soothing and relaxing, and as my son says: ‘Mummy, it’s sleep music!'
Since then I have played it in his room when he has had difficulty sleeping or is having a bad day.