Implementing Music Medicine to Improve Pain Outcomes After Abdominal or Pelvic Surgery: A Quality Improvement Project

Define the impact of the implementation of evidence-based music medicine (MM) on pain management outcomes after abdominal and pelvic surgery when combined with usual care.

This quality improvement project implemented MM in a hospital postanesthesia care unit using a pretest-posttest design. The Roy Adaptation Model and Kotter's Change theory guided all project phases.

Nursing staff were educated in-person, via electronic formats and paper handouts. A convenience sample of adults who underwent abdominal or pelvic surgery was offered a preselected MM playlist (via earphones and MP3 players) in addition to usual care during the Phase I recovery period. The outcomes included administered opioids (oral morphine milligram equivalents), pain levels (numerical rating scale), heart rate, respiratory rate, and systolic blood pressure. The outcomes for those who accepted MM (music group) were compared to those for patients admitted to the postanesthesia care unit 1 month before project implementation (baseline group).

The music group data revealed highly significant reductions in heart rate (P = .008, Cohen's d = 0.57) and systolic blood pressure (P < .001, Cohen's d = 0.78) at 30 minutes compared with pretest data. In contrast, the baseline group data showed no effect on systolic blood pressure levels (P = .274). The music group showed higher clinical significance (1.8 to >2-fold higher effect size) on reducing numerical rating scale scores at 30 minutes (music group: P < .001, Cohen's d = 1.19; baseline group: P = .008, Cohen's d = 0.55) and the final period in phase I (music group: P < .001, Cohen's d = 1.71; baseline group: P < .001, Cohen's d = 0.93). The mean morphine milligram equivalents dose for the music group (29.5 ± SD 19.8) compared with the baseline group (33.0 ± SD 26.6) was not significantly different (P = .376, Cohen's d = 0.18).

Adding MM with usual care leads to statistically and clinically significant reductions in pain indicators in adults who had abdominal or pelvic surgeries versus usual care alone.