WA report recommends music program for every hospital
A new report from Western Australia, linking the arts and improving health, offers as one of its six recommendations that musicians play a greater role in hospitals. These include them performing or collaborating with patients, and hospitals reaching out to strike partnerships with music festivals.
The report is titled An Examination Of Use Of The Arts To Improve Health And Healing in Western Australian Hospitals. Put together by the Arts and Health Consortium and Chamber of Arts and Culture. It is the first of its kind in WA, and underlines as its thrust that an arts program should be available in every WA hospital.
The Chamber is the united voice to promote, advocate and represent the value of a vibrant and sustainable arts and cultural sector in Western Australia.
The report offers an opportunity to put in place a leading edge and greater state-wide arts and health framework that will improve health outcomes for Western Australians. A joint policy between the Department of Culture and the Arts and Health it outlines the way of a WA implementation of the National Arts and Health Framework and modest committed funding.
“The good news is that this ground-breaking piece of research captures the significant amount of arts activity already taking place in Western Australian hospitals,” said Chamber Chair, Helen Cook. “However this activity is currently project based only with no policy framework, broad coordination or committed resourcing on an ongoing basis.”
Its recommended Comprehensive Music Program, which earmarks Royal Perth Hospital (RPH), for six months, has a mix of initiatives. These include a regular musical performances, roving health musicians working with patients at their bedsides, and musicians and composers working with groups of patients and/or staff for a specified period of time.
The suggested program engages a Registered Music Therapist as part of Allied Health Services as well as musicians. It offers staff music activities such as a hospital choir or ukulele group, which will be determined after consultation with those who become involved in the scheme. Possible funding partners are Lotterywest and the University of Western Australia (UWA). Possible partners, identified by the report, are RPH, UWA’s school of music, and local schools.
It looks at existing music programs that have delivered clear therapeutic outcomes like the one at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
The entire research project was carried out by consultants Kim Gibson and Liesbeth Goedhart and overseen by an Arts and Health Consortium convened through the efforts of the Chamber and its key partner, St John of God Health Care.
Key findings were that 75% of the WA hospitals surveyed deliver Arts and Health activity, and highly supported by patients.
But there is little evidence to suggest there are co-ordination, strategy and planning behind such activity. Hospital respondents cite the Top 5 barriers as staff capacity, funding, space/time, coordination and patient safety.
The Top 5 barriers suggested by artists and arts organisations are staff capacity, time, hospital willingness, space and a lack of priority accorded to the arts organisation.
The existing programs are usually centred around visual arts and project-driven (with little from music or dance) and, depend on short lived funding or sponsorship. Only 38% of artists engaged in Arts and Health activity in hospital sites have received any form of induction training. Only 28% of hospitals even evaluate the arts schemes.
The other recommendations by the report include a more state-wide approach to the scheme, a greater input from community especially in regional areas, that the initiative be part of hospitals’ renovations or new construction, and that each projects have a budget of at least $5000.
The report was launched in Perth by Arts Minister John Day.
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