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Updated: Oct 30, 2025
Clinical Practice Protocol of Creative Music Therapy for Preterm Infants and Their Parents in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Published on: January 7, 2020
Music Is Life-Follow-Up Qualitative Study on Parental Experiences of Creative Music Therapy in the Neonatal Period
Friederike Barbara Haslbeck1, Lars Schmidli1, Hans Ulrich Bucher1
1Department of Neonatology, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland.
Insights
Creative Music Therapy (CMT) positively impacted extremely preterm infants and their families, fostering bonding and healthy development. Parents found CMT beneficial, recommending it as a complementary therapy for NICU infants.
Area of Science:
- Neonatal care
- Developmental psychology
- Music therapy
Background:
- Extremely preterm (EP) infants face developmental challenges, creating a longitudinal burden for families.
- Social-emotional support, like Creative Music Therapy (CMT), is crucial for this vulnerable population.
- The NICU environment presents significant stressors for infants and families.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore parental perspectives on using CMT with EP infants during neonatal hospitalization.
- To examine the longitudinal influence of CMT on EP infants and their families.
- To understand how CMT impacts bonding and overall child development.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative study design.
- Semi-structured interviews with six families when infants reached school age.
- Inductive-deductive thematic analysis of interview data.
Main Results:
- CMT positively impacted infants, parents, and parent-infant bonding.
- Parents evolved from open-mindedness to recommending CMT as a complementary therapy.
- Infants demonstrated overall healthy development, despite some unique developmental delays.
Conclusions:
- CMT has a positive and formative impact on infants and parents in the NICU and beyond.
- CMT empowers parents through nurturing musical interactions, capacity building, and positive reinforcement.
- Further research can identify modifiable factors for improving healthcare for EP infants using resource-based approaches like CMT.
Abstract:
Developmental problems in extremely preterm (EP) infants and the associated longitudinal burden for their families are major health issues worldwide. Approaches to social-emotional support such as family-integrating Creative Music Therapy (CMT) are warranted. We aimed: (1) to explore parental perspectives on the use of CMT with EP infants in the neonatal hospitalization period and (2) to examine the possible longitudinal influence of CMT. A qualitative design was used to examine the perspective of six families from various backgrounds. Semi-structured interviews were carried out when the infants reached school age. We used an inductive-deductive thematic analysis to identify three main themes, each with three sub-themes: (1) the positive impact of CMT on the infants, the parents, and bonding; (2) the attitude toward CMT, from being open-minded to recommending it as complementary therapy; and (3) the experience of overall healthy infant development despite unique developmental delay issues. The findings elucidate the positive and formative impact of CMT on both infants and parents in the stressful NICU setting and beyond. CMT may empower positive transformation in the parents through individualized early nurturing musical interactions, capacity building, and positive reinforcement. Further research may help to identify and implement potentially modifiable factors for improving health care in this vulnerable group through early family-integrating, resource-based approaches such as CMT.
