The effect of music on care behaviors and burnout levels of nurses working in COVID-19 clinics

This study was conducted as a self-controlled intervention study to examine the effect of music on care behaviors and burnout levels of nurses working in COVID-19 clinics. This study was carried out with the approval of the hospital and ethical committees. Study sample was consisted of thirty-eight volunteer nurses who were working with COVID-19 patients at day shift of Ankara City Hospital General Hospital's inpatient departments of Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology, and Gastroenterology, General Surgery and Plastic Surgery Clinics at 1 September – 1 December, 2020 and meeting the inclusion criteria. Intensive care units, psychiatry clinics, emergency department, outpatient clinics and burn unit were excluded because they were specialized departments. Study data was collected with the Questionnaire for the Nurses' Descriptive Characteristics, the form for determining the Music Preferences of the Nurses, the Caring Behaviors Inventory-24 and the Maslach Burnout Scale. During the study, nurses were listened to classical music, which was their most preferred type, for 30 minutes every day at the day shift for 8 weeks, and the impact of music was examined by applying caring behaviors and burnout scale before and after the music. Data of the study was examined with SPSS 17.0 program. During the analyses of the data, along with descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon sign test, Dependent t-test, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, Student's t test and multivariate linear regression analysis were used. Study showed a significant increase in the assurance, knowledge-skill, respectfulness, commitment subscales and total score averages of the nurses' care behaviors scale (p<0.001) and a significant decrease in the mean scores of the burnout scale emotional exhaustion subscale (p0.010) after music. In addition, compared to before the music, it was determined that there was a significant negative relationship between the care behaviors assurance subscale score and the burnout scale's depersonalization subscale scores (r = -0.418 and p= 0.009) after the music. It was concluded in the study that music was effective in increasing nurses' who were working in COVID-19 clinics perception levels of care behaviors and decreasing their emotional exhaustion levels. According to study results, listening to music at certain hours in working environments of the nurses is recommended.