Music to my ringing ears.

    Tinnitus. My every present companion. Being a mechanic really does a number one's hearing. Loving heavy metal and hard rock doesn't help I am sure but, I would do anything for love as they say. Music does weird things to people, it makes those of us with functioning hearts (metaphorically) feel things, which I don't, but anyways. The patient today suffered from a stroke that left him mostly paralyzed and unable to talk.  His face though, to see him light up when the nurses put on music, was really incredible. There are times where pharmacologic methods of dealing with pain and discomfort are not appropriate and while I would not want the anesthesiologist to try Mozart instead of propofol, we should keep this in mind. 

    Several studies, which I will link to at the bottom, discuss the effect of music on patients AND on nursing students. These are not comprehensive and you can throw a packing peanut and hit a dozen studies on the subject. The first was a small RCT of 112 students where those who used progressive muscle relaxation and music therapy had lower blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol than the control group and a higher pass rate. The second a RCT of 200 palliative care inpatients showed "a significantly greater decrease in numeric rating scale pain scores" of between 1.9 + 2.14. 

    The take away? I think all hospitals should have the Iron Maiden discography on repeat on all units at all times for stress relief. This wasn't the music the two studies used but just imagine how much better my music choices would be. At least, it would relieve my stress. 



Resources: 

Effectiveness of music therapy and progressive muscle relaxation in reducing stress before exams and improving academic performance in Nursing students: A randomized trial by Gallego-Gomez et al in Nurse Education Today, September 2019

Image of cochlear nerve and surrounding structures from University of Michigan Medical School @ https://histology.medicine.umich.edu/resources/ear 

Music Therapy Reduces Pain in Palliative Care Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial by Jo Gutgsell et al. in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, December 2014

Occupationally-Acquired Noise-Induced Hearing Loss: A Senseless Workplace Hazard by Kermis and Apps in the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 2007


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What the H?

Image
As far as I can remember, I was never a medically minded person up until Christmas 2019. I knew what food poisoning was, blastomycosis, blood clots,  and cracked ribs were, but that was it. I'm sure I knew of others, but I never gave them a second thought as I was spared much in the way of illness. It's funny how such things shaped my life, and I never gave them any hold in my mind until much later. Not that these diagnoses were as profound as say, a cancer diagnosis, but they impacted me in many ways. All this to say, that was my breadth of awareness of the medical field, the corpsmen (God love them, seriously) were no help to teach me. I do remember vividly for some reason I can't explain, the time I found out about H. pylori, the "H" in the title. I had a buddy at the time with some gnarly, debilitating stomach pain. Boy did I not known what the hell to do about that. Ibuprofen? Acetaminophen? Nah, I know better now. And that. bug, and subsequent complications,...
Read more

Well S*#t

Image
We are just going to keep talking about GI subjects until I get tired of them. Probably after this but who knows? I get to take care of a lot of GI/GU patients at work with some of the "Greatest Hits" of the gut. Diverticulitis, intestinal perforations, colorectal cancer, pancreatitis, bowel obstructions, abscesses, bleeds, and the like. I won't ever be a GI specialist but I do love infections and the big dog at the moment is everyone's favorite, Clostridioides difficile  AKA Clostridium difficile maybe C. diff  or in this mess of words, CD.  CD is a Gram -positive, spore forming, obligate anaerobic, motile, "drumstick-shaped" bacillus. To expand on that, they need low-no oxygen environments (like the gut), create spores that are hardy and able to survive conditions that would kill the live bacteria, and CD creates toxins that cause many of the effects of a CD infection. Though we generally associate CD with the diseases it causes, sometimes called CDAD or C...
Read more

Bacitracin: Bacteria from Tracey

Image
Not even joking. No cap. The solemn truth. On the record. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but da truth. Bacitracin was named after bacteria from a lady named Margaret Tracey. How is that for useless knowledge taking up space in your brain? Before we get into that story, me thinks the three of you reading this have probably used, or had been the target of use for, bacitracin as a kid. The little packets are ubiquitous in first aid kits across the world. Got a cut? Bacitracin. Burn or scrape? Bacitracin. Ran out of toothpaste? Bacitracin. I really hope that sarcasm was evident, the lack of humor nowadays is stunning. Please don't eat bacitracin.  In 1943, a young girl named Margaret Tracy was seen at a hospital in New York, the precursor to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She had been hit by a car earlier that day and suffered a compound fracture of her tibia, which collected dirt from the road. The doctors cultures the wound which grew Bacillus subtilis and Staph aureu...
Read more