Music Therapy During Post Operative Abdominal And Thoracic...

Music Therapy in Post-operative Abdominal and Thoracic Patients Kelsey Milam Azusa Pacific University Music Therapy in Post-operative Abdominal and Thoracic Patients The purpose of this paper is to determine if music therapy is an effective intervention on decreasing the perceived response to pain in post-operative abdominal and thoracic hospitalized patients as compared with those who received pharmaceutical interventions alone. A literature review of eight articles will be evaluated and compared in order to ultimately give an overview of the applicability of this intervention to nursing practice. In this paper, the literature will be reviewed based upon applicability to the proposed research question. Background A major intervention executed by the medical surgical nurse is the pain management of post-operative patients. Often, this pain is not adequately treated by medications alone (Vaajoki et al, 2011). For post-operative patients, perceived pain can be measured with the use of a Visual Analog Scale. Overall, music therapy is a relatively new area of adjunct pain therapy and is therefore best researched in the generalized area of acute and neuropathic pain and anxiety. A potential area of further research lies in applying the use of music therapy to specific patient diagnosis as well as procedures, such as patient turning and bone marrow aspirations. This intervention is low-cost, is easily implemented and has no adverse