Dinner Music for Demented Patients

Abstract

At a nursing home ward for demented patients, selections of dinner music were played during three periods of 2 weeks. At the end of the study was a control period. The reactions of five patients to three different types of music were registered by video observations. This study showed that the patients were affected by music, particularly soothing music. For example, it was found that when music was played one of the study's restless patients became unusually calm whereas another fed herself more than usual. The patients spent more time with dinner when music was played. Dinner music made the patients eat more calmly. Music as a nursing tool is an intervention that is simple to realize and worth trying. A tentative conclusion of this study is that music can beneficially affect restless and agitated demented patients.

Fundamental nursing care: A systematic review of the evidence on the effect of nursing care interventions for nutrition, elimination, mobility and hygiene

“…The UCT trial (Ragneskog, Kihlgren, Karlsson, & Norberg, 1996) rated as of high quality in terms of its conduct (albeit in a design inherently prone to bias) tested the use of music during dining times and found both positive and negative effects on self‐feeding behaviours.…”

Evaluating two group programmes of cognitive training in mild-to-moderate AD: Is there any difference between a ‘global’ stimulation and a ‘cognitive-specific’ one?

“…There is some evidence that these interventions can decrease behavioural problems and improve mood (Karlsson et al, 1988;Kongable et al, 1989;Cooper, 1991;Smith, 1992;Pollack and Namazi, 1992;Groene, 1993;Ragneskog et al, 1996;Rovner et al, 1996;Brotons et al, 1997). However, research into this field has often lacked methodological design rigor, thus the evidence of efficacy is not firm (APA, 1997;Koger and Brotons, 1999).…”

Interventions for Improving Mealtime Experiences in Long-Term Care

“…Several of these interventions involved more than one activity (e.g., décor changes and way food prepared=served) (39,49,51,58,69,70), while others consisted of only a single strategy such as changing tableware color (71,72). Musical interventions (n ¼ 8 of 17) were a large proportion of single activity environmental interventions (23)(24)(25)(73)(74)(75)(76)(77). The most common design was within-group time series=crossover (n ¼ 8) and were from the United States (n ¼ 5), Taiwan, Sweden, and Canada.…”

“…Poor food intake is common in LTC (5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and is potentially due to a variety of multilevel factors such as resident (e.g., eating capacity), staff (e.g., dementia training), organization (e.g., policies around dining environments), and government (e.g., regulations on diet planning) attributes (7). Poor food intake can lead to malnutrition and its consequences include poor quality of life, hospitalization, morbidity, impaired healing and immunity, and death (7,10,(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). Poor food intake is also a potentially preventable and reversible problem and should not be considered inevitable with aging (35); the many factors that additively and synergistically potentially play a role need to be identified and targeted for intervention.…”

“…Eight studies investigated a music intervention during mealtime and seven used a time series=crossover design by alternating weeks between music played and no music played (23-25, 73-75, 77); the other used a pretest-posttest design (76). These interventions consisted of piano and= or nature sounds (73, 76), relaxing slow tempo (24,25,74,76,77), classical music (74, 75, 77), or a combination of different styles such as music residents were familiar with (24) or preferred (23). Outcome measures for persons with dementia were focused on behavior change such as physical FIGURE 3 Distribution of studies by year of publication.…”