Music in the lobby: Listener and performer perspectives of a hospital Visiting Artists Series (VAS)

Authors

  • Hanneke van Dokkum The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospitals, New York City, New York, United States of America.
  • Andrew Rossetti The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospitals, New York City, New York, United States of America.
  • Joanne Loewy The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospitals, New York City, New York, United States of America.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47513/mmd.v14i4.886

Abstract

This study reflects the development of a protocol for examining the essential elements related to implementing environmental music through a dedicated Visiting Artists Series (VAS) program in a large urban hospital lobby. Through random distributions of survey questionnaires and subsequent analyses, our findings present the seminal perspectives of both Visiting Artists and listeners’ (i.e., patients/personal caregivers and staff members), who both separately and together inhabit a vulnerable treatment environment. When fortified with environmental enhancements, hospitals may potentially prosper. We found that patients and personal caregivers, as well as staff members, are generally pleased with the hospital environment enhanced with music and expressed favorable perceptions of the environmental music series. Performers in the VAS described their impressions of the importance of environmental music in hospitals and are grateful for the opportunity to play under conditions where they were perceived to be appreciated. Suggestions for improvement of hospital lobby environments and the VAS are provided, as are future directions for clinical practice and research.

Author Biographies

Hanneke van Dokkum, The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospitals, New York City, New York, United States of America.

Nienke H. van Dokkum holds a Bachelor in Medicine and is currently enrolled in the MD-PhD program at the University of Groningen, with a research focus on neonatal stress, epigenetics, neurodevelopmental outcomes and the effects of live-performed music therapy. In 2021-2022 she joined the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine as a Fellow. 

Andrew Rossetti, The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospitals, New York City, New York, United States of America.

Andrew Rossetti, Ph.D., MMT, LCAT, MT-BC, is a, music therapy clinician, researcher, and educator who supervises the multi-site music psychotherapy program in radiation oncology at the Mount Sinai/Beth Israel Healthcare system

Joanne Loewy, The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospitals, New York City, New York, United States of America.

Joanne Loewy, DA, LCAT, MT-BC is an author, researcher, international speaker and director of the Department of Music Therapy, which she initiated at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in NYC in 1994. In 2005, she initiated the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine (LACMM), extending in-patient to an out-patient clinic and multi-site research center. She is an Associate Professor at Icahn School of Medicine and a Founding Member of the IAMM. 

Published

2022-10-30

Issue

Section

Full Length Articles