The project in summary

Music-therapy sessions for children and youths with congenital heart diseases and chronically ill hospitalized at the Hôpital des Enfants des HUG (Genève).

The project in detail

Successfully integrated, since 2019, inside six Paediatric Wards of the Hôpital des Enfants des HUG (Genève), thanks to the unique support of AMG, the practice of music-therapy significantly contributed to improve the psychophysical well-being of young hospitalized patients. Moreover, the results of the monitoring and impact evaluation processes, carried out during the years of the project (2019-2024), confirm that music-therapy is considered by the medical and nursing staff of the different wards where the music therapist intervened, as an indispensable complementary practice to the conventional hospital care and medical treatments.

More specifically, the project aims to:

  • humanize the hospital experience and allow young patients to build a space of autonomy and freedom, from where to recover their identity as active subjects;
  • reactivate their creative abilities and interpersonal ties to reduce the feeling of isolation and loneliness, induced by medical treatments, and mitigate their feeling of powerlessness in the face of illness;
  • improve the doctor-patient relationship through a sensory stimulation that, through play, enhance the externalization of feelings, sensations, and emotions;
  • improve the medical work environment, and reduce the stress of doctors, paramedics, and nurses.

Beneficiaries (2023-2025)

  • 297 children and youths (1 week-19 ages), in long-term care and suffering from serious and/or degenerative pathologies;
  • 178 children, with congenital heart diseases or suffering from cardiovascular diseases, aged 7 months-17 ages, primarily coming from Africa and participating to the program of the association Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque, based in Paris;
  • 62 preterm babies, in the Neonatal Care Unit;
  • 20 social hospitalizations (8 months-16 ages) and 5 patients from the Sentinelle Program (7-14 ages);
  • 267 parents;
  • 2 trainees.

Between February 2023-January 2025, with Alta Mane support, the following activities have been implemented:

  • 1’364 individual music-therapy sessions (for a total of 1’013h and 31 minutes) offered throughout the hospitalization and tailored to the needs, abilities, and socio-cultural specificities of the young patients, reaching 562 children and youths (1 week-19 ages), of which 62 preterm babies and 178 young patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases participating to the Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque program, as well as 267 parents in the Neonatal, Intensive Care and Medicine B2 Units. The music-therapy sessions have indirectly reached 60-70% of the nursing staff in the Intensive Care Unit, 10% in the Medicine B1 and B2, and 5% in the Neonatal Care Unit;
  • 2 training courses in music-therapy (70h) reaching 2 trainees;
  • finalization of the linguistic glossary, translated in 13 languages.

In 2025, the music therapist foresees to continue offering music-therapy sessions inside the six Paediatric Wards, intensifying their reach and frequency inside the Neonatal Care Unit.