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A Missive to Harpists in Healthcare
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THE BEDSIDE HARP
®
REPORT
needs my visit today. I play for her for about ten minutes. As I finish mysong, she shares with me that shemust make a very important decision.I play now to the rhythm of her words. Straightening her back andtaking a deep breath she suddenlydeclares, “You know, I feel ready todo that.”How do you hold these moon- beams, these precious moments of hope, clarity, joy, comfort and sooth-ing in your hand? How do you meas-ure a smile, gauge a patient’s delight,find the frequency of a moment of healing that you know happened be-cause you, playing your harp, walkedright into the eye of the storm these patients are living through?We are harpists in healthcare, andwe must strive to put what we do tothe same rigorous tests that scientistshold in high regard. And so we do.Or rather, we attempt to. Having par-ticipated in three formal studies over the past seven years, we at BedsideHarp
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know that the effects of harptherapy can be measured using strict,quantitative scientific methods. Butnot always and never completely.Indeed, given the nature of our work,such methods too often fall short of capturing the full story of all that oc-curs when a patient is given a sessionof harp therapy.In an article some years ago,Wayne B. Jonas, MD acknowledged,“We have to have deep respect for the many ways of knowing in theworld. Science, although it is a pow-erful way of discovery, is just oneway of knowing. Spirituality and reli-gious explorations are other ways of knowing. Those are important ave-nues into the inner world.”
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Dr. Herbert Benson, Director Emeritus of Massachusetts GeneralHospital’s Benson-Henry Mind BodyInstitute, was one of the first Ameri-can physicians to investigate the properties of spirituality as a healingforce. In 1975 he went out on alimb when he published his semi-nal work,
The Relaxation Re- sponse.
Here he provided convinc-ing data that interrupting one’snormal thought pattern for a periodof 11 to 18 minutes twice a day promoted better healing—at thetime, a fairly revolutionary stanceto be taken by a man of science. It began with Dr. Benson, a cardiolo-gist, wondering why certain of his patients healed faster and experi-enced far fewer complications thanothers after heart surgery. He in-vestigated this curiosity by ques-tioning all of them. What he foundwas that those who healed morequickly had one thing in com-mon—they either prayed or medi-tated regularly. The more he testedthis, the more this was confirmed.He termed this phenomenon therelaxation response (RR).I first had the pleasure of meet-ing Dr. Benson in 2004. To myamazement he told me he hadheard about Bedside Harp and thework we are doing. He went on toconfirm what I believed—that aswe walk through our hospitals, playing in hallways, patient rooms,ICU, PACU and the ER, we are, infact, evoking the relaxation re-sponse—that moment of healing proven in countless studies of his,to aid one’s ability to return to astate of wellness. I took the oppor-tunity to tell him that when a pa-tient relaxed into our music, I sus- pected that it did not take 11 to 18minutes for the RR to kick in—itseemed to me to occur fairly in-stantly. Dr. Benson agreed that our healing tones could very wellspeed things up.That was the good news.The bad news was revealed inMarch 2006,
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when the results of alarge and lengthy study of the power of prayer were published.Dr. Benson was one of the chief investigators in a research projectlasting ten years, involving 1,802 patients, and costing $2.4 milliondollars. This study provided evidencethat “prayers offered by strangers hadno effect on the recovery of peoplewho were undergoing heart sur-gery.”
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Worse yet, one of the parts of the study indicated, in direct opposi-tion to the results of a number of other smaller studies on the sametopic, that having someone you donot know pray for you could actually be harmful.Overseen by top doctors, taking adecade to complete, this study wasconducted in six hospitals, involvednearly 2,000 patients, and cost a cou- ple of million dollars. And with all of that, what was actually learned here?That we should never pray for any-one we do not know? That prayer chains should be disbanded? Cer-tainly the good doctor would never suggest anything of the sort, yet after looking at the numbers and readingthe formal report on this study, onecould walk away with such conclu-sions.Our experience in researching theeffects of harp therapy in many waysmirrors that of Dr. Benson. In 2002– 03 Bedside Harp and Robert WoodJohnson University Hospital Hamil-ton partnered on a project that askedif a 20-minute harp therapy sessionwould reduce the stress levels of pa-tients actively receiving chemother-apy. To minimize our variables, Iwas the only one who played, choos-ing a repertoire of well-known classi-cal, pop, oldies and folk melodies. If the patient indicated their fondnessfor a particular tune or requested afavorite song, I played in and out of it throughout the session, cradlinghim or her with the music.We used the widely recognizedSpielberger State-Trait Anxiety In-ventory (STAI) to collect our data.The STAI requires that the patientanswer questions relating to his/her
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