CMTER faculty and students in collaboration with the Department of Pediatrics celebrated Pediatric Wellness Week from 26 04 2016 to 28 04 2016 with the theme “Music for Pediatric Wellness” at MGMCRI to show that smiles are also important in addition to drugs, injections, and surgeries and the children coming to hospital can also be in cheerful mood and forget that they are in a hospital environment. CMTER started hosting a number of music programs for both the parents and children by way of musical storytelling, musical drama, singing, and other creative art activities in the pediatric inpatient wards and OPD since 26 04 2016. Children visiting the OPD were cheerfully watching music videos, singing and playing musical instruments and music therapists were also singing with the children. Dr.Sumathy Sundar, Director, CMTER and Professor Soundararajan, Department of Pediatrics inaugurated the events with the children visiting the pediatric OPD on the first day. The medical students posted to the pediatric department for training also actively participated in the music program meant for pediatric wellness. The music therapists were wearing animal masks and singing animal songs. There was a drama in which doctors and nurses were portrayed as friends of children to remove needle fears and there were musical stories with messages about health and other children themes. CMTER for the past one and half years has been regularly extending music therapy services during immunization procedures to all the children visiting the hospital for immunization programs as a way to distract the children from pain during the painful immunization procedures and reduce their distress levels. The music therapy program also addressed to reduce the anxiety levels of the parent holding the children during the procedures. This also resulted in a research project from CMTER and the Department of Pediatrics, results of which were published in an international journal. The pediatric musical activities were not only planned towards a positive recovery trajectory of the children by promoting wellness, reducing the distress levels of neonates/infants/children, the parents and the family during the hospital visit/stay but also are meant to develop skills in motor, communication, emotional and cognitive domains as a part of healthy development of the children in their lives. There were also creative musical activities on all the three days to increase compliance with diagnostic and interventional procedures, reduce pain perception and crying spells in children and to make the children adjust to the hospital environment. The faculty of CMTER Bhuvaneswari Ramesh and Kala Varadhan with the music therapy internship trainees Stephen Philip and Fr. Devadhas were actively involved in enacting the musical dramas, stories, singing and carrying out the creative art activities with the children
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