Pfirst session of Music Therapy in the Intensive Care and Intensive Care Unit of the Policlinico Riuniti of Foggia. The project, launched on 21 May 2024, was born from an idea of the Il Cuore Foggia association, welcomed with enthusiasm by the director, Gilda Cinnella and the department managers, Lucia Mirabella and Antonella Cotoia.
“Purpose of the project – explains the president of Il Cuore Foggia, Jole Figurella – is to improve the quality of life of people hospitalized in a very particular and difficult environment such as that of intensive care. The experimental phase of the project includes six weekly sessions, which will be carried out by the musician and music therapist Michele Bonfitto, specialized at the Artedo Music Therapy school and certified clown doctors. Volunteers who, in addition to being educators, have acquired the fundamentals of Music Therapy thanks to a training course organized at the Il Cuore Foggia headquarters”.
Recent studies on the brain have demonstrated the beneficial effects that music can have on patients hospitalized in intensive care and intensive care units.
“Music – explains Michele Bonfitto – activates a multisensory and cognitive stimulation which not only promotes the effectiveness of pharmacological therapies, but can help to communicate with all people who find themselves in a condition of isolation, allowing them to maintain or regain contact with reality. Furthermore, the main reason for the success of Receptive Music Therapy in Intensive Care is based on the fusion of two elements: the evidence of the behavior of the Central Nervous System, capable of absorbing sound-melodic stimuli more easily than environmental noises and the administration of carefully chosen pieces based on technical-musical parameters, taking into account the BPM and the harmonic composition. Already during the first session, it was noted that listening to the proposed playlist significantly regularized and decreased the heartbeat value, going from a value of 124 to 116″.
The initiative has already been successfully tested in some hospitals in northern Italy. “We thought we would propose it too – adds Jole Figurella – with the hope of contributing to making our hospital a place where the patient is cared for and supported at 360 degrees, between pharmacology and complementary therapies such as Music Therapy. If the results are as expected, the initiative will continue with the aim, among other things, of presenting a structured study on the effects of music therapy in intensive care that has a useful scientific value. We are certain that this can be a wonderful experience for everyone, even for doctors and nursing staff, who also find themselves emotionally involved in difficult and demanding situations. We thank the general manager Giuseppe Pasqualone for having authorized our project”.
“For the first time – he says Michela Fuiano, clown doctor and educator trained in music therapy – we didn’t wear our usual colored scrubs. But even though we missed the colors, we tried to make the music travel beyond the barriers of the disease. And it was exciting to feel that we were actually donating ourselves to a good cause. Today we have simply brought something more to the patients, we have used music as a bridge to reach them there, in the dimension where they are, waiting for awakening”.
