The transition to hospice services is sometimes overwhelming for our patients, especially the flurry of new people that come in and out of the home. For patients with cognitive/memory impairment, these new faces can be especially overwhelming. I was touched when I received a referral for music therapy to provide social interaction and engagement with a preferred coping skill for a patient who had been fearful of letting new people into her home. For her, music was such an important part of her life that she was willing to allow me into her home even though she was nervous about welcoming strangers. The first time we met, we sang together, and she immediately lit up. We spoke about how she learned to sing and play instruments in church and at the end of our visit, her daughter made a comment to me about how much our visit seemed to improve her mother’s mood. We continue to sing together every few weeks and joke about how we will make a record and have it played on the radio. It has been wonderful to see how this patient and her daughter have opened to the hospice team because of our visits. They are slowly allowing more team members to visit, and the patient is always excited to practice singing in anticipation of visits from both the chaplain and me.
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