Many travel nurses are regularly on the lookout for ways to improve their on-the-job performance and incorporate pleasurable activities into their daily tasks. Recent studies suggest that there may be one technique that can simultaneously accomplish both of these things: music.
According to ABC, humming or playing music is a great way to relax yourself and your patients throughout the day. Even more, music has been shown to put people in better moods and make them more amenable to instruction and directions. This knowledge gives people with healthcare careers an ideal way to make their days more pleasant and their approach to work more effective.
The right atmosphere
Much of the work that goes on in hospitals focuses on making the environment as comfortable as possible for patients and healthcare professionals. In this regard, music may be the perfect supplement to a traditional approach.
The calming effects of soothing music are well known – parents have been singing lullabies to their restless children for centuries, of course – but new benefits for specific types of patients are being unearthed every year. According to the news source, aging patients, even those with dementia, have been shown to benefit from exposure to music.
"There's something about music that cuts through right up until the very end of the disease," Geri Hall, a nurse at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, told the news outlet. "It calms them, it increases socialization, and it decreases the need for mood controlling medications."
Not just the patients
Of course, music isn't only good for the people you're caring for. According to Healthcare Traveler, nurses often find the music just as relaxing as their patients, and many are so enthused by the approach that they have considered studying the practice to find ways of putting music to better use in a hospital setting.
In this way, music can provide a great tool to help you grow as a travel nurse and even climb further up the career ladder. There are many programs for learning to use music in hospital care, so interested nurses may want to explore these further educational possibilities.
Start today
Playing music on-the-go has never been easier. There are many small, portable systems available that are perfect for travel nurses. Tiny radios and speakers that plug directly into iPods and smartphones may be just what you need to add relaxing music to your daily routine.