Effectiveness of Music Therapy on Pain Intensity among Hospitalized Post Operative Children Between 6–12 Years

An operation is one of the most traumatic event children face and many of the children experience post-surgical pain lasting for weeks or months. A combination of pharmacological and nonpharmacological method of pain control yields the most effective relief for the patient. Nurses have many approaches to treat pain by a variety of non-pharmacological methods such as distraction, relaxation, meditation, massage and auditory stimulation in combination with the traditional methods of analgesics and of which music is one of the important among these. Music has been recommended as an adjuvant to medication given to relief pain. Music therapy provides distraction and disassociation by focusing on the characteristics of the music selection. Music can block certain pain pathways and diminish the amount of perceived pain. A quasiexperimental study was conducted in Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and MRC, Belagavi among 30 post-operative children between 6–12 years undergoing abdominal surgeries to evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy on post-operative pain intensity and to associate the pretest scores of pain intensity of children with selected sociodemographic variables. The subjects were assigned to experimental and control groups by using convenience sampling with an evaluative approach. In experimental group, music therapy (instrumental music) was administered through head phone for 20 minutes of two sessions, at an interval of one hour between each session. Data was collected by using Oucher numerical pain scale. Data obtained were tabulated and analyzed in terms of objectives of the study using descriptive and inferential statistics. The mean post test pain scores for the experimental group after 1^stsession was 44 and that of 2^nd session was 39.3 while the mean 1^st and 2^ndpost test pain scores of the control group was 56.7. The study findings showed that there was statistically significant difference in the post interventional pain scores between experimental and control groups at P<0.05 level of significance but there was no association found between the pre test pain scores with selected socio-demographic variables.