EFFECT OF MUSIC THERAPY ON ANXIETY AMONG PATIENTS IN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

Abstract

Background

An intensive care unit is a special department of a hospital or health care facility that provides intensive care to patients with severe or life-threatening illnesses and injuries, which require constant care, close supervision from life support equipment and medication in order to ensure normal bodily functions. Anxiety is common among intensive care unit patients which can lead to various physiological and psychological changes making the patient recovery difficult. Effective management of anxiety is inevitable in health and recovery of critically ill patients.  Anxiety is estimated to occur in as many as 70 to 87 percentage of critical care patients. This emotion is an important issue in intensive care settings because of its prevalence, adverse effects, and severity. Anxiety is often treated by means of sedatives and considering its adverse effects on patient health and recovery arises the need for an effective non-pharmacological intervention to treat anxiety. In search of an effective intervention to treat anxiety it was found that music is proven to have a smoothening effect on human mind and in the light of its feasibility, music therapy was chosen for the study.

Materials and Methods: An experimental approach with 2 group pre-test- post-test design was used to study a total of 70 patients admitted in intensive care unit. Patients were assigned randomly to experimental and control group, 35 in each group. Anxiety was assessed using a 100-point numerical rating scale. Experimental group was provided with music therapy for 20 minutes and post-test anxiety was assessed after 30 minutes using the same scale in both the groups.

Results: Anxiety was present in most of the patients in intensive care unit. About 5.1 percentage of patients had extreme anxiety, 40.8 percentage had severe and moderate anxiety and 10.1 percentage had mild anxiety. In the experimental group the pretest showed 8.6 percentage of subjects had extreme anxiety, 51.4 percentage had severe anxiety and 40 percentage had moderate anxiety. After the intervention 82.8 percentage of subjects had only mild anxiety, 14.3 percentage had moderate anxiety and there were no subjects with extreme or severe anxiety. In the control group the posttest showed that the anxiety remained almost at the same level as in the pretest. The mean pretest anxiety score in the experimental group was 58.57 with Sd = 7.70 which was reduced to 26.27 with Sd=7.70 in the posttest. In the control group the pretest value was 53.43 and Sd was 10.83 and in the post test it was 51.71 with Sd=10.14. The reduction in the anxiety in experimental group was statistically significant with a p value 0.000 at 0.05 level of significance. There was no association between anxiety of ICU patients and their selected variables.

Conclusion: Patients admitted in the intensive care unit had significant anxiety. Music therapy was highly effective in reducing anxiety in critically ill patients. Nurses must promote use of music therapy as it is easily applicable and acceptable to patients in intensive care unit.