Journal of Community & Public Health Nursing
Open Access

Abstract

Childbirth is a painful process especially to primipara. Stress occurs when the body is out of equilibrium. Anxiety is a response of the body when it perceived change. Music provides relaxation to the body; however music as pain management has very limited study in the Philippines. Thus this study investigates the significant effect of music therapy to the pain and anxiety level during active phase of labor. This is a quasi-experiment which utilized purposive sampling. Participants were interviewed and assessed on pre-test and post-test pain and anxiety level during active phase of labor. Control received routine nursing care, while experimental received routine nursing care with music therapy for two hours duration. Findings revealed no significant difference in the level of pain and anxiety between pre-test and post-test of the control group. However, a significant difference was found in the level of pain in the experimental group. Pre-test anxiety score of the experimental group had decreased yet did not reached significant level. Thus, there is no significant difference in the anxiety level of the experimental group in pretest and post-test. Furthermore, there is no significant difference on the pain and anxiety level between the experimental and control group. Thus, music therapy had no significant effect on the pain and anxiety level experienced during active phase of labor in pimipara. Effectiveness of relaxation brought by music therapy highly depends on how patients accept the intervention. Relaxation of the body can be possible through conditioning of the mind over time, hence cannot be possible when heard only once. Thus further studies are encouraged on music preferences during labor, pain threshold, and correlation of pain and anxiety level and at different setting such as private hospitals or lying-in clinics covering bigger population. Keywords: music therapy, pain level, anxiety level, quasi-experiment, primi, active labor.

Biography

E-mail: klricafortacera@up.edu.ph