Heather Seubert knows the power of music.
As a sophomore, she started working with Jill Winters, Ph.D., R.N., associate professor of nursing, on a three-year study that examined how music affects heart rate after a heart attack. The experience inspired her to pursue a career as an advanced nurse practitioner.
“Research planted the seed of curiosity,” she says.
Working in four different hospitals, the research team played low-rhythm music for patients recently treated for coronary thrombosis and then monitored the patients’ heart rates. Seubert helped analyze the data, looking for patterns.
“Everyone knows that nurses provide care,” says Seubert, “but the research helped me understand why we perform certain practices over others.”
In the ever-changing medical field, there is a growing emphasis on evidence-based nursing practice. Seubert incorporates her research findings into her everyday work in the cardiac unit at Waukesha Memorial Hospital and the intensive care unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Milwaukee.
When patients are anxious and tense, Seubert will limit activity in the room to reduce a rapid heart rate. “I close the door, dim the lights, and offer to play music,” she says. “The results are definitely there.”
For a second study, Seubert worked with patients suffering from congestive heart failure who were treated with exercise therapy. Many of the subjects could not lift a basket of laundry or push a vacuum cleaner. After an increased exercise routine, patients could do more.
Working with patients’ exercise habits stresses the education component in nursing. Seubert helps patients assess how to make individual lifestyle changes in order to stay healthy. This includes meeting the social, psychological and physical needs of each patient.
“Nursing is care for the whole patient, not just the disease,” she says. “As a nurse, you have to take time out to make that one-on-one connection.”
Life Cycle: From Birth to Death
- Unraveling the mysteries of proteins
- Protecting brittle bones
- Understanding the damaged brain
- The lungs: more than gas exchange
- The mind-body connection
- Preserving family peace
- Bringing clarity to delirium
- Protecting muscles on and off Earth
Improving the Human Condition
Studying Our World
Ethics & social justice
- Keeping business honest
- Of humans and cyborgs
- Journalism, ethics and the law
- Punishing corporate crime
- Dissecting financial fraud
- Scrutinizing elder law
Student Research
Interdisciplinary Research
Quick Facts About Marquette
| Identity: | Catholic, Jesuit, private |
| Established: | 1881 |
| Location: | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Undergraduate: | 8,048 |
| Postgraduate: | 3,500 |
| Campus: | Urban, 80 acres |
| Athletics: | 14 NCAA Division I teams (Big East Conference) |
| Colors: | Blue and Gold |
