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Music in waiting area

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"Music in waiting area"

About: The Shirley Health Partnership

When I was waiting to be seen recently, you had music playing. The vast majority in the waiting area were elderly, apart from a couple of kids. The music was very urgent, aggressive and staccato,,

I think Rap music, but it was so distorted that it was almost impossible to distinguish what it was.

My question is ..what is the purpose of having musac playing?

Is it to calm the patients, who are sitting nervously awaiting their call?

..or is it to relax the overworked receptionists as they try to communicate with hard of hearing patients.

If this is the case, then the choice of music or radio station (I couldn’t tell what it was) is entirely inappropriate.

Subconsciously it would have raised the tension level of everyone in earshot.

..and this isn’t that I don’t like the type of music. In a club with a good sound system it would have been great.

But totally inappropriate in a busy reception area.

If you must have musac playing please please please make it something calming and quiet.

But ideally switch it off. As the quality of your loudspeaker system is awful.

Thank you.

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Responses

Response from The Shirley Health Partnership 5 years ago
The Shirley Health Partnership

Submitted on 15/11/2018 at 10:27
Published on nhs.uk at 11:06

Thank you for your feedback. Research by the British Medical Journal ‘Music in the Waiting Room’ concluded that the playing of music had no significant effect on self-reported anxiety or health status. Public performance licensing (PPL) research initiative with PRS for Music, MusicWorks, shows that playing music in a waiting room can help patients feel more relaxed and comfortable (86%), while speeding up the perception of time spent in the waiting room (80%). Additionally, 68% of patients say that recorded music can help the visit seem less frightening. We currently play a local radio station ‘Heart Hampshire’ which was felt would provide a variety of local news, traffic and travel updates and a mixture of different music genres. We except that the selected radio station will not be to all our patients liking and we will monitor the volume to ensure that it is an acceptable level but we feel that having background music is a positive experience for our patients who sit in the waiting room. Please continue to tell us about your experience of visiting the Partnership.

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