music

[chloe]

I work in Pacu and I am tring to convience my manager to let us use music therapy on our patients. I think a set of earphones with relaxing music might help decrease anxiety and help drown out the screams of other patients after surgery. Has anyone tried this? Has anyone tried any other alternative therapy in Pacu and was it successful?

[sharann, BSN, RN]

Hey Chloe,

I have wanted to bring this up to my co-workers but I think they would laugh me out the door. I am forever trying to decrease my patients stress levels with meds(of course for pain) and dimming the lights and trying to keep the noise level down. But I work with rowdy people and they don't seem to "get it". They are very experienced, they just don't get it or maybe they don't care to. If anyone is using music as a complementary therapy measure in their PACU's I would be interested in any ifngo/studies/etc.

Good luck with yours Chloe.:)

[seeley]

I have seen music used in the PACU sucessfully with regional anesthesia patients post-op. They can take awhile to show full motor return and sensory block to fully descend. In the meantime, the patient can be relieved of some of his/her anxiety while waiting for this to occur by listening to music with headphones on. One anesthesiologist in particular I have worked with liked using this therapy post-op and intra-op for the patient. It really did seem to alleviate the anxiety of waiting out the recovery for the patient.

Problem was keeping track of the headsets...in fastpaced ORs things tend to get lost/misplaced and that was frustrating for this anesthesiologist. It is a nice therapy if you can operationalize it.

Seeley:)