All study participants were employees at a
nursing home, an industry with an unusually high turnover
rate. When staffers at one Pennsylvania facility participated
in six drumming sessions with their coworkers, however, they
experienced nearly a 50-percent improvement in mood, including
a decrease in feelings of fatigue, anxiety and depression.
Moreover, during the year following the drumming
sessions, 49 fewer employees resigned than had the previous
year, saving the facility nearly $400,000 in costs associated
with training new hires.
These findings suggest that incorporating drumming circles
into the lives of employees can be a cost-effective means
of helping workers and reducing turnover, both in long-term
care and other industries, study author Dr. Barry Bittman
said.
"We're not just talking about long-term
care," said Bittman, who is based at the Mind-Body Wellness
Center in Meadville, Pennsylvania. "There's no reason
this wouldn't work" in other contexts, as well, he noted.
Workers in long-term care typically exhibit
a turnover rate estimated at between 40- and 100-percent per
year, which research shows is largely a result of emotional
factors, such as burnout.
During the study, Bittman and his colleagues
asked 112 employees at the Wesbury United Methodist Retirement
Community to participate in drumming circles for one hour
per week for six weeks. Before and after the six-week sessions,
participants completed questionnaires designed to assess their
mood.
Participants came from all parts of the facility,
and included nurses, dietary workers, accountants, administrators
and housekeepers.
In the drumming sessions, participants performed
a series of exercises, including beating the drum to the rhythm
of their own name, copying the rhythm of others' names, representing
their feelings via drumbeats, playing along to music, and
discussing ongoing stresses with the group, if they so chose.
Immediately after the sessions were completed,
people showed a 46-percent improvement in mood. Six weeks
after the sessions ended, the same people showed a more than
62-percent improvement in mood, suggesting that emotional
boost can continue long after the music has ended.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Margaret
Bailey of the Mind-Body Wellness Center, who facilitated most
of the drumming sessions, said she suspected the exercise
helps people because hearing the rhythm of others' names introduced
coworkers, and playing together "creates a connectiveness
and energy within the group."
This connectiveness, in turn, enables people
to feel supported by others, talk about their problems and
cope with them before a situation escalates into something
that makes workers want to leave their jobs, Bailey noted.
According to Bittman, making music may bring
people together better than other group activities, such as
group retreats or team sports, because it is more cost-effective
and accessible to people of all physical abilities. Furthermore,
music may inspire more openness to others by asking people
to adopt "a level of communication (they) weren't accustomed
to," he noted.
Bittman added that he uses similar techniques
with patients living in long-term facilities and their families,
as well as those with cancer and other chronic illnesses.
The study, funded by Yamaha, appears in the
journal Advances in Mind-Body Medicine.
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