As the value of music in healthcare settings begins to gain currency, four Irish musicians are planning to put their heart and soul into it, writes Sylvia Thompson
More and more people are experiencing the benefits of music in healthcare settings as musicians bring innovative programmes of workshops and performances to hospitals and day centres throughout Ireland.
And, later this year, four Irish musicians will begin a new training programme which, they hope, will lead to more opportunities for musicians to train to work in healthcare settings.
One of the key aims of the European Music in Healthcare Settings training programme is “to humanise the hospital environment for patients, visitors and staff”.
Aingeala De Búrca, one of the participants on the training course, is a violinist and music therapist who has worked on several music in healthcare projects.
She says the musicians benefit as much as the workshop participants. “I love this work. It’s rewarding, creative and sociable. It also feeds into my work as a performer.”
According to De Búrca, working in healthcare settings requires musicians to have a flexibility about what they play and how they interact with people.
“If you consider how we are often working with people who are very institutionalised, who are used to a particular routine and framework with limited ability to make decisions. Well, the music sessions give them an opportunity to make choices and this is empowering for many people.”
The fascinating thing about the development of this art form in healthcare is that unlike other creative arts such as poetry, painting or creative writing, the proof of the success does not come in the form of a finished project (anthology of poems, art exhibition, etc) but rather from the more elusive yet profoundly moving accounts of participants.
“It’s extraordinary what’s happening in places like Alzheimer wards or neonatal units in hospitals,” says Liam Merriman, singer-songwriter who works with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust.
“We are working with people with severe Alzheimer’s disease who no longer recognise family members and who can’t string a sentence together yet in a music session, they sing songs they once knew,” explains Merriman. “The staff even say that after the music workshop, the patients are easier to manage. Music is reaching a place that medicine just doesn’t reach.”
According to Merriman, premature babies are also showing strong responses to music. “We can see their bodies opening up and softening to the sounds of the music. We also see how their heart rate goes down when we are playing and they feed better afterwards,” explains Merriman.
The Waterford Healing Arts Centre based in Waterford Regional Hospital is an example of how arts and health are becoming more integrated. The Arts Office at the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght, Dublin is another. But there are also projects developed by organisations such as Music Network and by musicians themselves.
One such project, Music in Healthcare Partnership Project developed by the HSE and Music Network, brought music workshops to older people in residential and day-care centres in the midlands. Staff and patients alike were moved by the experiences.
One patient says, “I loved hearing everybody chat and be happy. The look on their faces was pure delight when the music was being played.” A staff member adds, “the whole atmosphere was lifted by the sessions. It raised the spirits of the staff as well as the patients and we were all on a level.”
An evaluation report of the Music in Healthcare project found that patients who participated in the music workshops improved their fine motor skills, co-ordination and concentration and by making an effort to attend the workshops, they also overcame certain physical and psychological obstacles that they might not have been motivated to overcome otherwise.
However, musicians working in healthcare settings are adamant that their work is different from music therapy.
“It’s part of a broader concept of healing. It helps people become less fixated on a specific set of symptoms or disease. It allows them to feel better about themselves and gives them a better mental attitude. Even if this can’t ultimately take their symptoms away, it can give them a better quality of life on a day-to-day basis,” says De Búrca.
The group experience is also significant. “Music provides opportunities for expression in a group and people can connect with each other through rhythm, melody or song. This experience has an impact on everyone there but it’s different from music therapy which is a clinical process of dealing with emotions.”
As part of the European Music in Healthcare Setting Training Programme, Merriman and De Búrca together with two other Irish musicians – Joe Philpott and Finn McGinty – will complete training days in healthcare settings in Paris, France, Manchester, England, Krakow, Poland and in Dublin.
They will be joined by musicians from these countries who are partnered with organisations similar to Music Network. The training is funded by the Leonardo da Vinci lifelong learning programme of the European Union.
“I think the training will help us train more musicians in Ireland to do this rewarding work which will in turn develop further music in healthcare and provide an additional career path for musicians,” says De Búrca.