Literature Review in Nursing

For centuries, people have used music for healing purposes. Today, in healthcare practice, music has been used to address cognitive, emotional, physical and social needs of patients. Anxiety and dyspnea might arise from other factors the patient might be experiencing as a result of COPD. As such, music as applied in other fields can be used to reduce anxiety and reduce anxiety-related dyspnea among the COPD patients (Gavino, 2015). Music therapy is known to give joy and pleasure. Being persistent with music therapy has been shown to increase the quality of life. Patients suffering from chronic diseases such as COPD in the advanced stage suffer from severe breathlessness and recurrent respiratory decompensation that calls for frequent rehospitalizations. Anxiety and dyspnea have been known to worsen the condition for people at this stage of illness. Interventions such as non-invasive ventilation for comprehensive care have been shown to be effective (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, 2012). Such interventions have been enhanced with the use of technology as telemonitoring to maximize the outcome.

According to Grocke, Bloch and Castle (2009), the gender of the patient is not a factor that determines the outcomes of music intervention. This may be possible because the music used in therapy is chosen by the client. Music therapy outcomes also were not significantly affected by the age of the participants. Most probably as a result of the freedom the participants have in choosing the type of music to be used during the therapy. Music therapy has also been included in therapy before for chronic diseases such as dementia and cerebrovascular disease. Okada et al. (2009) conducted a research to find out whether there was the significant relationship between music therapy and anxiety reduction among patients with dementia and cerebrovascular disease. They found out that music intervention groups showed a significant relationship between music therapy and improved conditions. Some COPD patients have shown to continue being breathless even after pulmonary rehabilitation and pharmacology therapy. As a result, Lord et al. (2010) decided to introduce singing as a therapy to address these discrepancies. The results showed that singing classes improve the quality of life measures and significantly reduced anxiety. The patients viewed singing positively, and there were no adverse consequences to those who participated. However, music therapy might have other outcomes other than decreasing anxiety that subsequently leads to reduced oxygen demand. As Dossey et al. (2012) argue, the music intervention can influence the relaxation of respiratory muscles from anxiety that helps the clients pace their goal setting and consequently enhancing their quality of life. For patients being nursed at their homes, home-based music therapy has been shown to play a significant role reducing depression, improve quality and improve the relationship between the caregivers and the elderly patients (Schmid & Ostermann, 2010). Music therapy has been applied in other health fields; in children music can help reduce anxiety among children undergoing bone lumbar puncture, marrow biopsy or aspiration (Shabanloei et al., 2010; Nguyen et al., 2010). The results obtained after the interventions that used music listening as an intervention showed that the experimental groups were less anxious during the processes compared to the control group. Nguyen et al. (2010) found out that the children in the experimental group also reported having experienced less pain. There is anxiety among patients who are undergoing cancer therapy. The experience is not good for cancer patients.

Scholars Lin et al. (2011) found out that verbal relaxation intervention and music therapy can be crucial when used during the period of chemotherapy to help the patients relax and reduce anxiety. Anxiety can worsen dyspnea; therefore, reducing anxiety also plays a significant role in reducing the dyspnea that consequently increases exercise capacity of a patient (de Voogd et al., 2011). Exercise training is one of the most common interventions for patients with COPD. Therefore, music intervention and anxiolytics targeting reduction of anxiety and dyspnea are fundamental in COPD management. If pulmonary disease patients are assigned music, they are likely to experience immediate reductions in myocardial oxygen demands, heart rate and respiratory rates. Even after hours, such reductions are likely to remain significantly greater (Panigrahi et al. 2013). As such, a patient can receive music therapy before undergoing an intervention that has associated anxiety-related dyspnea.

From the literature review, it is apparent that music therapy has a significant relationship with reduced anxiety-related d dyspnea. Music therapy has been used successfully as an intervention in patients with chronic diseases. The relationship between music therapy and COPD has not been comprehensively covered. As such, this study will come up with more comprehensive and valid information on the relationships existing among music therapy, quality of life, oxygen demand or other clinical results among the COPD patients to cover this gap in the literature.

Literature Review Summary

Peer-reviewed Article Important Finding

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (2012) The article provides a summary of different articles with relevant information on interventions of COPD

Grocke, Bloch and Castle (2009) The