“Music brings familiarity to an unfamiliar space, predictability to a place that can be an unpredictable,” says Lindsay Ward, a Certified Music Therapist on the IWK Child Life Services team. “As music therapists, we can support the establishment of familiarity and predictability which in turn supports patients coping with hospitalization.”
Music therapy uses music as a therapeutic tool to address a variety of needs, including stress reduction, pain management, improved communication, and emotional expression, all while making the hospital experience more positive and normalized.
Lindsay provides individual music therapy sessions to in-patients as well as a group session once a week called “Music Mondays”.
“A moment that made me realize the impact of my work was when a family reached out after their child had passed. They had had regular music therapy sessions with me weekly until they were discharged home for palliative care. The patients’ family reached out and requested for me to sing and record a video singing one of the patient’s favourite songs with some of the words changed for the fathers first father’s day without their child. Our day-to-day interactions had a profound and lasting impact on this family in the years following their child’s death and they were beyond thankful for the positive, joy-filled, musical memories they made with their child.”
March is Music Therapy Awareness Month, a time to celebrate the remarkable benefits of music therapy and the certified music therapists who use it to help people of all ages and abilities.