Music as Medicine: How personalised playlists are transforming person-centred dementia care across the UK

Background: Playlist for Life is the UK’s leading music and dementia charity, advocating for the use of playlists of personally meaningful music to be embedded into dementia care.

Based on over two decades of research, showing that personalised music can reduce some of the most distressing symptoms of dementia and improve quality of life, Playlist for Life has developed an implementation model that focuses on an integrated ‘whole community’ approach. We have strengthened knowledge and skills within the UK workforce by training 13,000 health and social care professionals and students since 2017, and our intervention is signposted within the Scottish Dementia Strategy.

This model for health and social care professionals focuses on how personalised playlists can help professionals discover and celebrate the varied experiences, heritages and cultures of the people they are support, using music as a tool to enhance connection and to promote wellbeing for all through the diversity of musical identity.

Playlists are being used to transform dementia care in health and social care settings across the UK and are also supporting people with dementia and other life changing conditions to use music in their personal care planning, shifting the balance to supporting people with dementia to self-manage and live well in the community

Approach: This 60-minute interactive workshop will introduce participants to how Playlist for Life’s whole community model for embedding personalised music into care can support integrated care. The session will include:

1. Evidence supporting the Playlist for Life model and how it can be implemented in care.
2. Practical group activities, enabling participants to identify how music could be integrated into their setting and how to better connect and support people they support through the process of uncovering their personal playlist.
3. Case studies from a wide range of settings using playlists across the dementia care pathway, including:

- An NHS Board who are using music playlists to reduce pressures in Acute Wards, Accident & Emergency and in Community Mental Health Care, where they have seen reductions in medication for 80% of participants (of 10 surveyed).

- A Care Home group who has seen reduced distress, increased communication, improved emotional well-being and increased engagement (in a study of 13 participants) and increased wellbeing for staff members.

4) Sharing of printed resources, co-designed with people with lived experience. to support delegates to implement their learning within their own setting.

5) Q&A with Playlist for Life leader

Results: and Outcomes: Participants will gain knowledge and skills to begin exploring how integrating personalised music could enhance their approach to care. Best practice examples from across the UK will demonstrate how Playlist for Life can be adopted sustainably in a range of settings.

Implications: The workshop demonstrates the success of partnership working between the third sector and settings across different care pathways. The workshop will share with all delegates, from health and social care teams, to policy makers, to people with lived experience, how the adoption of a non-pharmacological intervention like personally meaningful music can create truly person-centred care.