Seemingly, there is nothing more incompatible than music, cheerful and loud by definition, and a hospital environment. Such combination seems impossible, and yet for a child who has to stay in a hospital and is detached from reality, from everyday life he or she is used to, it is music that becomes therapeutic help. Why should a child be deprived of his favorite night song on the ground of illness and admission to hospital? Music will let him maintain contact with the familiar world, make new relations and dialog by means of poetry.
The purpose of musicians’ stay in the hospital environment is to improve the hospital conditions for a child, his or her family and the doctors themselves. They can play music and sing in the ward, together with children and their parents. Members of the Association find time to play with kids and teach them to listen out to the outworld. The song children will learn would accompany them to the surgery and enable them to find their way home, like Tom Thumb. And percussion will become “a sound toy” and an object of study.
Music unites, it destroys the age, language and cultural barriers. A waiting room would become a music saloon where children will discover instruments, and nothing will remain for the parents but just to be amused by their cheerful response and involvement. They ask how it works, and meanwhile the children have already started playing.
The medical staff hums to infants while changing them or bathing them overnight. Parents are also allowed to sing - it facilitates their involvement in the hospital life. At the premature baby unit, mothers find contact with the newborns thanks to a song they have known from the earliest childhood. “It is a pleasure to realize that my child hears something else apart from the instrument audio signals; after all, there is so much in music!” Parents come to a better understanding of their own role, and music makes for better contact with children.
The Association’s activity is also aimed at urging medical staff to pay attention to the presence of harmful noise, in particular, in the premature baby units and intensive care, which would lead to improvement of the audio atmosphere. And finally, the doctors themselves are also taught music, which means the love and skills, theoretical and practical knowledge becoming a standard way of contact with children are passed to them.
