NICU music therapy program reduced stress, promoted healing at Grey Nuns Hospital

Rebecca Lappa playing music in the NICU at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital on Thursday, June 4, 2026. (Nahreman Issa/CTV News Edmonton)

A temporary music therapy program at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital helped new families bond, heal and settle in.

Gypsy Bendoy’s one-month-old son Timothy is spending time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) after being born prematurely.

Timothy is her third child, all three were premature births.

“Sometimes the monitors, alarms and all that stuff, it scares you,” Bendoy said.

“This is my third baby in the NICU, but it never really gets easier, it still scares me.”

Something that helped calm mother and child was the music therapy program at the hospital.

“My husband is a musician, so he was doing this with my 26 weeker,” Bendoy said. “She was my eldest and she was in the NICU for a long time, almost three months, so my husband would just bring a guitar and play.

“I know it helps … it relaxes them, soothes them.”

The temporary program, the first of its kind in Edmonton, started this year as part of music therapy student Rebecca Lappa’s final masters practicum.

“Hearing is actually one of the first senses that babies develop inside the womb,” Lappa said.

“It starts around 14 weeks and by around 30 weeks they can definitely recognize their parents’ voices and any other familiar sounds.”

Lappa herself was a NICU baby and wanted to be able to give back to that community.

“I just feel really proud to have been able to support (families) on their journey.”

Feedback from staff and patients at the hospital for the program has been “quite positive,” according to Mark Lansing, a program manager with Covenant Health.

“I don’t think people really realized the impact it has until we actually got it,” Lansing added.

“We did a lot of education sessions before it started, and so it tended to be really well-received.”

Lappa’s practicum is over now and she’s working with the hospital to be able to set up a full-time music therapy program.

“Right now, there isn’t funding for the NICU therapy program, but we’re really looking to our community to help fund the program through donations, so that we can help support more kids and their families,” said Karlee Conway, the director of marketing and communications with Covenant Foundation.

The foundation works to fund programs, like the music therapy one, that go beyond traditional health care.

Lappa says there are a number of benefits that would come with a full-time program.

“Data has shown (a music therapy program) … reduces hospital stay time by up to five days, so that would allow for nurses and other staff to not be spread as thin with the resources that they do have, and it would also allow for more families to be seen,” Lappa said.

“It also allows for staff and parents to be less stressed because there’s a lot of like excess noise in the NICU … but music can bring down monitor fatigue, which also allows healthcare providers to make less mistakes doing their job because they’re less stressed.”

Donations to the Covenant Foundation can be made online.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nahreman Issa