Music Therapy Gathers Brilliance: What You Need to Know
NICU patient experiencing music therapy.
On Friday, January 19th, the Music Therapy department at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, created, organized and hosted an all-day NICU Music Therapy Lecture. This was the first NICU Music Therapy Lecture given outside of a music therapy conference, and it was such an honor to have hosted it at UCSF. After the event, UCSF hosted a networking reception so the participants could get to know each other in a more relaxed setting.
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This lecture was open to nurses, child life specialists, music therapists, neonatologists, and anyone in the medical field who wanted to learn about music therapy research and how it is currently being used with premature infants. This work stems from the pioneering work of Dr. Jayne Standley of Florida State University, who developed the research and protocols to work with this population.
Participants started the day off with a welcome from UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital’s President, Dr. Anderson, and Jeff Peterson from the Peterson Family Foundation. Nurse manager Kim Johnston and neonatologist Dr. Liz Rogers of Benioff Children’s Hospital’s Intensive Care Nursery spoke about their experiences and relationship with music therapy in the Intensive Care Nursery. Two music therapists who specialize in working with premature infants flew out from Kentucky to present at the lecture as well. In addition, Matthew Logan and Brianna Negrete spoke about creating heartbeat recordings and NICU music therapy in palliative care.
This was an exciting event, and it’s promising to know that more music therapists have been educated about how to use music therapy with this fragile population.
Please read our other blog posts including How to Use Music Therapy to Heal and Triumph: Zoe’s Powerful Story and What You Need to Know: 3 Popular Music Therapy Questions to learn how music therapy personally touches lives and it’s incredible health benefits, and visit our Contributions page if you’d like to help us make a difference for hospitalized babies, children and teens!