Topic 8

Philosophy of Care: Focused on the end of life.
Team-Oriented Approach:
- Bringing together the various healthcare practitioners and family members to enhance the comfort of the individual as well as enhance their quality of life
Goals: Enhance comfort and quality of life (QL), prevent suffering, and relieve pain.
Guidance: Care decisions are guided by the wishes of the patient.

Focus: Emphasizes living to the fullest and being present rather than the act of dying.
Implementation: Understanding what music therapy looks like in palliative settings.

Patient Demographics: All ages of individuals who are terminally ill benefit from music therapy.
Support for Families: Family and friends also receive emotional support and comfort.
- it is not only the patient who are affected

Focus Areas: Music therapists address physical, emotional, spiritual, cognitive, and social needs.
- Managing pain, challenges with breathing, movement or speech
Whole Person Approach: Engages the individual’s entirety rather than just symptoms.
Non-invasive and cost-effective,
Can be delivered actively or passively.

Psychosocial: Address anxiety, loss, spirituality, autonomy/control, isolation, and family cohesion.
Pain Management:
- Pain is the number 1 symptoms of people in palliative
- Common Symptoms: Part of care includes managing pain effectively.
- Dyspnea Management: Entrainment techniques used for shortness of breath.
- Sleep Difficulties: Addressed through music therapy practices. Relaxing with the help of music

Psychosocial Support:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Isolation
- Confusion
- Grief
- Impaired Communication
- Ineffective Coping
- Self-Esteem
- Relationship/Family Issues
- Life Review
  - creating a playlist that showcases their whole life, It is reflective of their whole life
  - Creating a song. Could be chronological of their life story

Methods:
- Music Listening (reduce stress, breathing, heart rate)
- Improvisation
- Singing (oxygen saturation, elevating mood)
- Songwriting (life review, creating a song that reflects one’s own life)
- Music Playing
- Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) (listening to pre-recorded music and the therapists is facilitating the dialogue around the images that the client is experiencing
- Lyric Analysis (looking at the lyrics of songs and finding ways to articulate how they feel and what is happening for them

Role of Family: Family members are included in palliative care processes.
Impact of Music Therapy: Helps empower family members to feel actively involved with their loved ones during this difficult time

Adaptability: Singing, music listening, and song choices can be adapted to suit all ages and functional levels.
Therapist's Role: Music therapists must adapt interventions based on real-time patient needs and responses.

Keeping Patients Awake: Discussion around the cognitive and emotional benefits of keeping patients engaged through music.

Individual Experience: Acknowledge that bereavement has no set time frame or routine.
Support Options:
- After a loved one's death or even pre-death, individual support is available.
- Bereavement groups or one-on-one sessions may be offered.

Understanding palliative care principles and the implementation of music therapy within it.
Palliative care is a philosophy of care that is focused on living, not dying
- If focuses on enhancing your quality of life and is driven by the client
Clients could be in their home or living at a hospice