Just the Right Touch

Hospitals can be stressful places not only for patients in pain, but also for visitors and staff. On occasion, blood pressure shoots up…muscles knot…shoulders tense…tears are shed…headaches and anxiety rule…fear takes over. No one knows this better than Linda McGinnis, RN, MA, Director, Patient Care Services/Critical Care Division at UMDNJ-University Hospital (UH), who decided that regular programs of massage therapy within the hospital might help everyone.

More than a year ago, McGinnis began working with a multidisciplinary committee including Lillian Pliner, MD, medical oncologist, Joyce Davidson, bereavement counselor, Kathy Donnelly, RN, nurse manager, Neurosurgery, Neurology/Oncology, and representatives from three accredited massage schools. The Institute of Therapeutic Massage, based in Pompton Lakes, and its director Lisa Helbig, shared her vision enough to make it a reality and the reviews are all excellent.

Massage therapy at UH has taken three roads. First, with a doctor’s permission and nurses’ recommendations, patients are being offered various types of therapeutic touch by an already-certified massage therapist, studying and working on campus to earn 100 hours of continuing education credits by attending lectures and practicing skills. Female patients are assigned to female therapists, males to males, and manipulation is administered only to hands, arms, feet, shoulders, head and lower back.

"Many of our patients have been touched by violence and very traumatized so massage is a welcome relief," McGinnis says. In palliative care and pain reduction, the news is just as positive. "We had a very fearful chemotherapy patient in the clinic who rated her pain, on the scale of one to five, as a five. By the time the nurse came back with the pain medication, she was having a neck and foot massage and her pain was gone," McGinnis says. Massage therapy students are also working successfully in the areas of cancer, HIV, neurological, cardiac, trauma and pediatric patient areas. Charles Cathcart, MD, interim director, UH-New Jersey Medical School Cancer Center, says, "In the area of oncology, the art of touch and caring can be as therapeutic as our traditional treatments."

Jeffrey Gold, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS), experienced the effect of massage on pain and anxiety when his daughter Jillian was hospitalized for urgent spinal surgery. "Post-operatively, she was maintained on a morphine drip," he explains. Yet, "she continued to be in pain despite escalated doses." A massage session left her with a relaxed and peaceful sense of well-being which lasted for several hours afterward.

Technically, massage is the manipulation of soft tissues of the body using a system of strokes to induce relaxation and comfort. Why does it work? Institute Director Helbig explains that an ordinary muscle should feel like a slouchy balloon filled with water. When muscles are tensed and knotted, it’s as if the balloon has been placed in a freezer and allowed to become crystallized. Kneading the tissues, using friction, compression and range of motion stretches, "can lower blood pressure temporarily, reduce heart rate, increase the flow of body fluids and improve an overall sense of well-being." More than 800 patients at the hospital have benefitted.

In a second step, the Institute has also established a satellite campus of their school at the hospital so that brand new students can go to classes in Newark two evenings a week. Part of this program invites regular UMDNJ employees for full body, one hour, Swedish massages where the therapists in training earn clinical hours. Available on Monday and Tuesday evenings, this treat is free for all employees. To schedule a session, call 973-953-1153.

The Institute has also been offering training and certification in what is known as "chair massage." In this type, a therapist works the individual’s back, arms and sometimes the hands for 10 to 15 minutes. A special chair allows the subject to rest, face-forward. McGinnis has been keeping records on staff who come to her in need of just the right touch to make it through a shift. The preliminary data on 454 employees indicates that 87 percent left feeling better. "They go away energized," she says.