How music therapy can help in medical procedures

Although music is generally perceived and experienced for its aesthetics of beauty and general qualities of pleasure and enjoyment, music in the form of music therapy can provide procedural support to patients.

During medical procedures, music therapy can support patients, in particular paediatric children to engage in a way that deliberately seeks to switch on the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic system looks after the workings of the body during rest and recuperation. It also controls heart rate and body temperature under normal conditions.

A few years ago, I remember how anxious I was when I had to have a medical procedure done at the hospital. I could hear the surgeon and the cling clanging of the metallic tools as the local anaesthetic injected in me did not work. It was a dreadful experience. I was basically singing in my head to keep calm and reduce the noise of the tools that I could hear being used.

Within procedural support, live instrumental and vocal improvisation can act as a medium to unify and hold the space and contain the room and the experience. Music therapy changes the medical experience.

Therefore, music therapy through the careful selection of preferred music that is adapted to the patient can provide familiarity, predictability and regularity for the patient during a medical procedure that can be worrisome and create anxiety.

Through calm vocals and tempered instrumental dynamics, music therapy aims to create: