Evaluation of the effectiveness of music therapy in improving the quality of life of palliative care patients: a randomised controlled pilot and feasibility study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Music therapy is frequently used as a palliative therapy (Demmer, 2004), with the primary aim of improving people’s quality of life. To date, primarily because of a paucity of robust research, the evidence for music therapy’s effectiveness on patient reported outcomes is positive but weak (McConnellet al., 2016). Aim(s) This pilot and feasibility study will: test procedures; outcomes and validated tools; estimate recruitment and attrition rates; and calculate the sample size required for a phase III randomised trial to evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy in improving the quality of life of palliative care patients. Method(s) A pilot controlled trial supplemented with qualitative methods with n = 52 patients from an inpatient and day hospice setting. Baseline data collection includes the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (MQOL), medical and socio-demographic data. Participants in the intervention arm are offered two 30–45 minute sessions of music therapy per week for 3 consecutive weeks, in addition to care as usual. Participants in the control arm receive care as usual. Follow-up measures administered at 3 and 5-weeks. Qualitative data collection involves focus group/interviews with HCPs and carers. Results The results of the study will ensure a firm methodological grounding for the development of a robust phase III randomised trial of music therapy for improving quality of life in palliative care patients. Conclusion(s) By undertaking the pilot and feasibility trial under normal clinical conditions in a hospice setting, the trial will result in reliable procedures to overcome some of the difficulties in designing music therapy RCTs for palliative care settings. References Demmer C. A survey of complementary therapy services provided by hospices.J Palliat Med2004;7(4):510–516 McConnell T, Scott D, Porter S. Music therapy for end-of-life care: an updated systematic review.Palliat Med2016. doi:10.1177/0269216316635387. Accessed March 4, 2016
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.034 | 0.030 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".