The Germans Trias Hospital has implemented the practice of music therapy within regular medical care, launching an interdisciplinary Music Therapy Unit. Made up of clinical professionals and professional music therapists, the Unit wants to improve the quality of care for patients, family members, workers and any person who has contact with the healthcare environment, regardless of their context or health status, also promoting scientific research.
Its promoter is the young pediatrician Pablo González, who last year, in his last year of residency and taking advantage of his career as a professional musician (trained in singing and piano at the Liceo de Barcelona and at the Royal Welsch College in Cardiff, and with later experience as an opera tenor), completed a master's degree in Music Therapy, laying the foundations of the project that has ended up becoming the Unit. Since September, its activity has been carried out two days a week in the hospital's Neonatology unit, individually for children and family members who require it, and according to indication and coordination with the responsible medical team.
In these actions - which are planned to be expanded in the Pediatrics plant and in the Gynecology and Obstetrics and prenatal Services -, González is not alone. He is accompanied by Mercè Redorta, music therapist at Nexe Fundació, an entity with more than 40 years of experience working with children with multiple disabilities, which has already used music therapy to improve the quality of life of cared for children and their families. Mercè has a key role in the project and her participation is possible thanks to the agreement that Nexe Fundació has signed with the Ferrer-Salat Music Foundation to bring music therapy to children who need it. Redorta has been trained in a pioneering methodology in music therapy intervention with newborns, which will be implemented for the first time in Europe within the framework of this project.
In accordance with Germans Trias being a university hospital, an important part of the project includes teaching; In this sense, the Unit receives intern students from the Master of Music Therapy at the Higher School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC), with whom the hospital has signed a pioneering collaboration agreement in its field.
The practice of music therapy dates back to the beginning of the last century in the United States and, subsequently, its practice has spread to other populations and sectors, with scientific societies that endorse its practice around the world.
Specifically, research in the field of Neonatology demonstrates benefits such as the stabilization of physiological variables - heart and respiratory rate - the containment and relaxation of babies and their families, and the humanization of the environment. This is especially relevant in these patients, who remain hospitalized for a long time due to prematurity or illness, subjected to more or less aggressive treatments and connected to devices.
“There are numerous studies that support that music has beneficial effects. From the point of view of neuroscience, its potential to stimulate all areas of the brain is clear: motor areas, personality areas, those that have to do with the processing of emotions and language... It is a powerful tool for rehabilitation, early stimulation and the enhancement of neurodevelopment,” says Pablo González.
The philosophy of this intervention is also in line with the evolution that neonatology has experienced in recent years, betting on increasingly open units - such as the neonatal unit at the Germans Trias Hospital - and to incorporate mothers and fathers as active agents. of newborn care, to improve prognoses. “All interventions that focus on modifying the environment and humanizing it are positive,” González emphasizes before explaining why all of this not only benefits the baby.
The professional music therapist is not only limited to performing a musical performance. “We try to promote communication and knowledge and strengthen the bond between members of the family unit and their baby. “We want to create a climate that allows them to interact, so that they can forget that they are in a hospital, surrounded by machines and alarms, and encourage that they are in a safe space where they can interact and get to know each other more,” she emphasizes.
For her part, Mercè Redorta adds that the intervention often helps parents alleviate the emotional shock of seeing their child hospitalized and the feeling of guilt and constant danger that many feel. "Some sing or get excited, they look at each other or the baby as she reacts to a stimulus, with eyes of discovery, forgetting for a while the anguish of the days they are living," she emphasizes. In fact, part of the Unit's research project focuses on verifying whether the therapy improves the parents' anxiety and stress levels in relation to the baby's admission and hospitalization: so far, around twenty cases have been studied, a total of more than fifty interventions carried out.
The project of the Music Therapy Unit of the Germans Trias Hospital has been one of those chosen this year by the Talent Aid program of the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation. These are scholarships to reward, retain and enhance the careers of young talent from hospitals and research centers, so that they can develop their capabilities to the maximum and carry out a research project linked to their areas of specialization.
