Music Therapy for Pain Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Music Therapy for Pain Management - Essay Example While practitioners report good results with it, most of the practice is based on empiric evidence. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to explore research to find out evidence that can support current practice or can change practice. To determine evidence, a literature search was undertaken on the available database with the key words "music", "therapy", "music therapy", "nursing practice", "pain management", "complementary therapy", "alternative therapy", and "palliative nursing." This resulted into 234 articles. These articles were further searched on key words "research articles." This narrowed down the number of articles to 34. Among these articles, a search was conducted with the key word "national guideline," and this revealed 0 articles. This indicated there exists no nursing practice guidelines on pain management with music therapy. Further search was conducted with the phrase "systemic review", and this resulted into 6 articles. One of these articles was chosen, and another 5 articles were chosen from the previous group. The inference from this search was that music therapy is practiced in contemporary palliative care nursing practice, but there is no national guideline for its use. However, the existence of many systemic reviews tells us about the evidence that can be used in practice. Article that Best Supports Nursing Interventions The article that best supports nursing interventions is "Music as an Intervention in Hospitals" by Evans (2001) on behalf of The Joanna Briggs Institute for Evidenced based Nursing and Midwifery. This is a systemic review of articles graded on the basis of level of evidence. The author sites evidence from literature that music has been used for all age groups in a wide variety of clinical care settings as adjuncts to conventional management. The care settings include intensive care, coronary care units, and even outpatient departments. From the evidence, it appears that it has been used universally across practice settings. In some cases, it has also been used a relaxation technique. The author presents findings from different articles and studies. Evidence suggests that music in the form of recorded music from a compact disc player was the therapeutic music of choice. The randomized controlled trials indicate that music has been used for reduction of anxiety, relaxation, reduction o f pain, improvement of cognitive function, buffering noise, increasing satisfaction, improvement of mood, increment of exercise tolerance, and improvement of tolerance of some procedures. Music has also been used to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and pain. The outcome measures for pain control were decrease in the severity of pain and decreased requirement of analgesics. For procedures, the decreased requirement of sedatives was evidenced by improvement in patient satisfaction, better tolerance of procedure, and notable elevation of mood. The researchers recorded symptomatic reduction of anxiety and corroborated these through physical examination, which indicated reduction in heart rate and respiratory rate. No subjective reduction of pain symptoms was noted, although the dose of analgesics required to produce a desired pain relief was less. Similarly, reduction of required dose of sedatives during unpleasant procedures was noted. This review did not find any evidence that music impr oved tolerance of the procedures, but it improved mood of the

Common Health Problems found in Horses Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Common Health Problems found in Horses - Essay Example Asymptomatic treatment akin to humans due to the causes that afflict humans like hidden dust mites, pollens, seasonal changes for asthma or COPD or Chronic obstructive path airway disease, etc. cause the respiratory problems. This condition known as â€Å"pipers† to horse dealers and â€Å"heaves† to the rest can also lead to COPD. (Important Information on Preventing and Treating Heaves, 1998) The common symptoms are the same as humans, which are wheezing, and a persistent cough. Anybody knows that an Asthmatic patient can’t undertake any heavy exercises or exertion and the same rest has to be accorded to the horse you love. Therefore fresh air is of essence and the horse should be taken out into the fresh air from its stable whenever possible. Allergies caused from dust, smoke, pollutants etc. are also the same factors, which can cause allergies in the horse. The symptoms are quite familiar and more exactly described as a horse becoming unwell with like â€Å"tearing eyes, coughing, or raised lumps on the horse’s shoulders†¦. yet can prescribe in some cases of heaves are corticosteroids† (Horse Allergies: Symptoms, Common Causes & Treatments of an Equine Allergy, 1995). Another common problem with horses, apparently healthy is drooling or salivating from the mouth unusually. Called SLUD, which means salivating, lacrimenting, urinating, defecating is a result of eating on fungal infected cloves and legumes. This is can be treated with anti fungal as the symptoms take 2 to 3 days to reveal after the horse has consumed the infected legumes and should be given limited feed of hay and the infected Pasteur should obviously be out of bounds usually again in humid and damp conditions which are most conducive fo r fungal growth. (Horse Saliva Syndrome: A Common Fungal Disease, 1999) Skin rashes and itching are also common in horses where the affected area can also lead a bald patch