Music After Surgery: PACU benefits
Music in the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit)
This article is written to benefit both medical professionals as well as individual patients.
Have you used music after surgery in the PACU? The surgery is over but the patient is still under anesthesia and just beginning to emerge. The headphones are still on the patient’s head but does the music actually help the patient? YES it does! Based on the hundreds of people who have used the headphones, we have learned that the music can:
- reduce nausea and vomiting
- provide orientation to time and place, after being disoriented under anesthesia
- allow for a faster release from the Post Anesthesia Care Unit
- decrease perception of pain and pain medication requirements
- Help patient get back to the life they had before surgery was needed
Are these significant benefits? You bet they are! The thing about having the therapeutic music playing from the moment the patient arrives at the hospital on the morning of surgery, is that it begins slowing down their rapid breathing (anxiety) and rapid heartbeat (anxiety). When the patient is anxious, breathing becomes very shallow and rapid. Patients feel like they might go into a “fight or flight” response.
How does the music slow down these involuntary responses? It does this through a process called “Rhythmic Entrainment.” This is the same phenomenon (from physics) that makes you clap your hands when you hear rhythmic music. The right type of rhythm calms the patient down by synchronizing the heartbeat and breathing to the pulse of the music.
In the picture: Patient enjoying serene music that entrains with healthy resting heartbeat
When a patient goes into surgery, the music helps KEEP the heart and breathing slow and steady, often requiring less anesthesia during the surgery. When this music is coming through cordless headphones, the patient doesn’t hear the surgeon’s conversation or music. Often the conversation and the music playing for surgical staff is not what the patient needs to hear.
By the time the patient gets to the recovery room, or PACU, the heartbeat and breathing remain slow and steady, and, as the patient wakes up, the music helps to orient them to where they are and reminds them, in a positive way, of what just happened. This is just a birdseye view of what happens when the patient uses our Surgical Serenity Solutions headphones during their surgery or other medical/dental procedure. To purchase these for your PACU or ASC, go to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com/hospitalheadphones.
To purchase them for yourself, go to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com/patientheadphones
