Examination of the effect of music upon the postoperative pain management in pediatric patients in the age group of 7-12 who are hospitalized in the orthopedics service.

The study was planned as a case-control study in an attempt to examine the effects of music upon the postoperative pain in pediatric patients in the age group of 7-12, who had undergone an orthopedics surgery. A total of 60 pediatric patients in the age group of 7-12 were included in the study, who had undergone a surgery in Dokuz Eylül University and Practice Hospital, Orthopedics and Traumatology Service between June 2011- October 2011, participated in the study voluntarily. Among these patients, 30 were in the case group and 30 were in the control group. The data started to be collected after obtaining the required permissions. Description form of children who had undergone an orthopedics surgery and their families, which was prepared by the researcher, was used for the collection of the data, Visual Analogous Scale (VAS) was used for the assessment of the pain experienced by pediatric patients during the postoperative period and finally, pediatric pain follow-up form was used for the determination of the severity, location of the pain and the factors increasing-decreasing the pain. SPSS (Statistical Package of Social Sciences) 15.0 for Windows program was used for the analyses of the data. As well as the percentage and chi-square tests, the significance test (t test) was used for the difference between two averages in independent groups. According to the data of the study, there is a similarity between the case and control group, in terms of the distribution of variables regarding their age, gender, operation type, whether they had undergone an operation before or not, the first postoperative analgesic time and type, and the difference between two groups was found to be statistically insignificant (p>0.05). The homogeneity of groups was enabled.According to the results obtained from the study, it was determined that the pain scores of children in the case group who had undergone a surgery were significantly lower within the first 6 hours compared to the children in the control group (p< 0,05), the music being played affected the pain score within the first 6 postoperative hours in the case group, there was no statistical difference between the pain scores of pediatric patients in the case and control groups within the first 12 and 24 hours (p> 0,05) and the music being played did not affect the pain score in the case group within the first 12 and 24 hours. In line with the results obtained from the study, music was suggested to be included in nursing practices as an independent nursing intervention, due to its positive effect within the first 6 hours during the postoperative period.