Im stuck on my essay, can someone help?

[TheDayMyButtWentPsycho]

Really simple question actually - just an issue ive never come across before. I can email my lecturers but i know they wont get back to me until Monday and im trying to crack on with it this weekend.

Im researching a subject (medical) that is big in america with positive effects on its patients.

The UK are archaic when it comes to this therapy. There are no books in my uni library on it, there's very few (Im yet to find any) UK academic studies/journal articles in the uni online library.

i need to be able to state this, but i need to back it up.

I cant just say "theres fuck all therapies in UK" I need to be able to back that up. I need an academic to have said it (otherwise, whats to say it isnt just my bad research skills??)

Ive also found a company online who actually do this therapy and they claim to be the only one in the UK that does this therapy.
i want to state this, but thats just words on their website. My son could have written that for them, so I cant back that up either.

Basically- How do I say theres bugger all in the UK and back that up when theres bugger all in the UK to back it up with?

Ive read countless US journal articles on the subject and as of yet, no one has mentioned the fact that theres bugger all in the UK.

Excuse my typos, blabbering and mistakes, Im typing fast on a laptop im not familiar with.

i hope Ive made sense???

How much time do you have? I would contact academics in the field on the off chance they reply. Do you know anyone?

I think your nasty comment to @ScabbyBabby , OP, says it all for me.

Really unnecessary and unkind.

My apologies Scabbybabby. The thread took another tone and I took your post negatively.
I appreciate your help.

*Domtom^ YES. Thank you! I hadn't considered (yet, I would like to think it might reach me at some point! ) mentioning the lack of info on NICE. Thanks for pointing that out to me. I mean, that IS my back up. It isn't there on the NHS or NICE.
God that seems so bloody obvious now.

Racecardriver only 2 weeks. I've emailed one company, hopefully they will respond. I haven't contacted any academics though I must admit. I should look into that. Thank you.

Bubbles108 nasty and unkind, helpful thank you.

And it's not like NICE wasn't mentioned up thread either.

It just hadn't occurred to me to actually state in the essay that there's nothing on NICE.

I can't find much from the UK either, apart from this which you've probably already seen OP, it was carried out earlier this year, funded by the Cornwall music therapy trust.

www.maternityandmidwifery.co.uk/events/wp-downloads/london-2018/presentations/MMF_London_2018_Presentation_Seminar_16_Wendy_Jeenes.pdf

I would go down the route of stating there is a wealth of literature from the US where the therapy is popular, but a lack of research conducted in the UK and cite the company who state they are the only providers in the UK

Ah yes the Cornwall one has been posted. Although I haven't read it yet, earlier on I went directly to their website instead and found nothing on neonates. I must have approached it from the wrong angle, I'm going to have another look when I get in.

www.ahsw.org.uk/diary.aspx?id=1106 It appears Chelsea and Westminster hospital were doing Music Therapy in NICU in 2014, from this link to a CPD event.

And there was this event in Cambridge in 2016 www.bamt.org/DB/events/nicu-and-music-therapy-training-day.html

(Bottom of the first page of Google hits for me)

musicspace.org/where-we-work/bristol-childrens-hospital/ Music Space provide music therapy at Bristol Children's hospital. So I think you'll have to decide what counts as "Music Therapy"

And in 2016 there was this training course for "Tier 1" First Sounds RBL Training

www.bamt.org/DB/events/nicu-music-therapy-training-course-first-sounds-rh.html

The existence of a training and accreditation structure suggests reasonably wide-spread practice to me

Have you been in touch with any of the UK academics who wrote this paper? www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08098131.2016.1205650?journalCode=rnjm20

Is it this subject

Not sure how rigorous the stats quoted in the this presentation are, but at least some work has been done to try to measure the effectiveness of music therapy for babies in SCBU

www.maternityandmidwifery.co.uk/events/wp-downloads/london-2018/presentations/MMF_London_2018_Presentation_Seminar_16_Wendy_Jeenes.pdf

Have you looked on the NICE website?

www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/allied-health-professionals/roles-allied-health-professions/music-therapist

It is an NHS job, so there must be something more out there

www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/music-therapist

www.england.nhs.uk/blog/music-and-dementia-a-powerful-connector/

www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(12)70126-6/fulltext

Ooh! And that research on dance, music and gait

www.rhn.org.uk/content/uploads/2016/10/Gait-presentation-slides-removed.pdf

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641247/

There's loads of stuff out there. Is there something specific you need that isn't

Lougle I haven't come across that yet - thank you!

OlennasWimple I found that already, I'm pretty sure it's advertising staff training for HCP's. Not what I'm after at this point but thank you.

Olennas thanks, that was linked up thread. There's nothing on it that I haven't already seen (or similar too) however it did have something about a Cornwall hospital trialing music therapy for neonates which looks interesting!

My apologies, I missed your post where you specified neonate babies!

Indeed there is lots out there, music therapy is very established.

I'm looking into music therapy for neonates in particular. This is very much in its infancy (no pun intended). And there isn't lots out there.
Which is why I've chosen to study it.

Anyway, I've reached a conclusion on how I'm going to word the lack of information out there, so thanks for your help on that.

If you need to cite absence of journal publications you can state in your methods that you searched e.g pubmed, Cochrane database using the search terms A,b,c which returned X number of articles”

There are a couple, you may have full access, I no longer do!

scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=UK+music+therapy+neonatal+abstinence+syndrome&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

What about www.oxfordscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580514.001.0001/acprof-9780199580514-chapter-012

If you need to cite absence of journal publications you can state in your methods that you searched e.g pubmed, Cochrane database using the search terms A,b,c which returned X number of articles” God no! I got roasted for that - and in turn roasted my students in the same way!

Rather than say that OP needs to rephrase her question. If she has chosen to apply the essay to an area where there is little research then she has chosen badly! She needs to choose again. I suspect that is all that will be concluded.

Is it an evidence based practice report? That you've done your database search on and can't find much by the way of British research and so have to justify your inclusion of international research? If so, I'm doing one right now too and would tackle it something like this in my search strategy section...

Preliminary searches, conducted using keywords identified in Table X as shown in Appendix Y, uncovered a lack of British research relevant to the inclusion criteria. As neonatal physiology is largely unaffected by cultural practices, the inclusion criteria were therefore adjusted to include international research. However, for reasons of practicality exclusions were still applied where studies weren't available in English.

I'm an university researcher.
In OP's situation, I'd write "Does not seem to have been trialed in a British population" and follow on with some sentences about the search strategy you used that failed to find relevant British patients.
Not that complicated to explain.

I just have to point out that the test populations seem to all have been TINY. Not to mention the outcomes are heterogenous+. A proper systematic review with risk of bias & meta-analysis would likely fail to conclude that no benefits could be shown.

*no should = any!