How does humming help?

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Humming and singing is part of the universal language of caring, said Genevieve "Jeni" Gipson, a Norton registered nurse. And now, she will begin to study the practice.
Gipson's program, the Career Nurse Assistants Program Inc., has received a $13,000 grant from the Johnson & amp; Johnson/Society for the Arts in Healthcare. The grants, funded by the health-care-products corporation, are given annually to groups that promote the use of the arts to enhance the health care experience for patients, caregivers and their families.
The group was one of 19 in the country that received a 2004 grant.
Gipson's project, "NA Songs," will document the way nursing assistants, or nurse's aides, use singing to manage their frail clients.
Frequently, Gipson said, nurse assistants have to use their intuition about their work, because it's not easy to get a frail, often confused person to accomplish a task. Universally, nursing assistants sing or hum to help patients ease transitions, said Gipson, who has consulted in long-term-care facilities throughout the United States and also in China.
"I'm standing in this nursing home in Beijing, and here are nursing assistants singing to patients to get them off the toilet, or to stay out of dangerous places," she said.
With the help of assistants, including a songwriter, Gipson will gather stories from nursing assistants, trying to understand how they use their voices as tools.
"These stories are about the scenarios, what they did and how it worked," Gipson said. "It will be their stories."