Transforming Care Through Music: OPUS Music CIC Partners with Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust

At OPUS Music CIC, we believe in the profound impact of music on health and well-being. We are thrilled to announce our new two-year partnership with Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust, aiming to integrate the healing power of music into the healthcare services at Sherwood Forest Hospitals. This collaboration seeks to create a “musical hospital,” enhancing the healthcare experience for patients, staff, and visitors through the therapeutic benefits of music.

Our Mission: Music as a Healing Tool

Music’s ability to soothe, uplift, and heal is well-documented. Through this partnership, we aim to make music an integral part of the healthcare routines at Sherwood Forest Hospitals, bringing its proven benefits to every moment of care.

Over the next year, we will focus on fostering a culture where music is seamlessly woven into the fabric of healthcare. Our approach will be driven by three core strategies:

1. Healthcare Musicians on the Wards: Our professional musicians will regularly visit the wards and make music with patients and families. These interactions offer the chance to engage, communicate, release stress and emotion, and find the joy in music making, offering an escape from current medical challenges and impending operations.

2. Training and Support for Staff: We will provide comprehensive training to hospital staff, equipping them with the skills and knowledge to incorporate music into their daily routines. This training will enable staff to use music as a tool for improved health and wellbeing, relaxation, patient engagement, and emotional support.

3. Capturing and Sharing the Impact: We will meticulously document the effects of our initiative, gathering feedback and data to measure its impact. This will help us refine our methods and share our insights with the wider healthcare community.

A Promising Start: First Training Session

On Friday, 14th June, we held our inaugural training session with the staff at Sherwood Forest Hospital. The session was a resounding success, filled with enthusiasm and a shared commitment to enhancing patient care through music. Our team of passionate and experienced musicians guided the hospital staff in exploring the transformative power of music.

One participant remarked, “Very worthwhile. The trainers were clearly all very passionate, interesting, excellent at delivering/sharing the importance of music and its impact it can have. Fantastic course, thought-provoking, very informative.”

Another healthcare professional added, “It is definitely a worthwhile study day and it’s something that you can find to apply to practice at some points during the working day! Well done OPUS!!”

Genny Cotroneo, OPUS Training and Learning Manager reflected on the session, “The engagement from the trainees was fantastic. We had staff from four different wards, all with very different patient needs and different priorities, but everyone found something that they could take back to the ward with them. From asking family members about favourite music artists for dementia patents; to having 10min music sessions on the children’s ward two or three times a week; to introducing background music during doctor ward rounds on the infant intensive care unit, the ideas of how music can be incorporated into daily routines were flowing. With the follow up support of the OPUS trainers, we’ll make these ideas come to life together. That’s the exciting part!”

Looking Forward

This partnership represents a significant step towards an increasingly holistic approach to healthcare. We are excited to see the positive changes that will come from integrating music into the daily routines at Sherwood Forest Hospitals. By bringing the healing power of music to the forefront of patient care, we aim to improve the emotional and physical well-being of everyone in the hospital.

Jo Thornley, SFHT Community Involvement Manager explained, “On behalf of the Sherwood Forest Hospitals Charity, I applied to NHS Charities Together for post Covid recovery grant. I was delighted to learn that I had been successful in securing funding to extend OPUS visits for a further 2 years. In addition, this funding would enable us to offer staff training to provide colleagues with the skills and confidence to include music as part of their daily patient activities. Feedback indicated that following OPUS visits, there has been a marked improvement in the health and wellbeing of our patients and carers but also in staff morale. I am excited to build on our partnership over the coming years and continually look at opportunities to make music a key part of our hospitals.”

Nick Cutts, CEO added, “It’s a delight to work alongside the varied teams of healthcare professionals at Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust, who together share our vision for a musical hospital. By exploring and learning together, we are able to develop multiple new approaches to integrating music into care.  We look forward to sharing this programme as beacon of excellence for others to follow.”   

We are eager to share the progress of this initiative with you and look forward to the continued collaboration with Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust. Stay tuned for updates as we work together to create a musical hospital.