2.1. Participants
hearing deficiency
ADVANCED CANCER, RECRUITMENT
A total of 82 caregivers participated in the present study: 41 in the intervention group and 41 in the control group. The criteria for inclusion were that the participant should be a family caregiver of a patient with advanced cancer in home palliative care, over 18 years of age, and not have a severe hearing deficiency. The exclusion criteria were that the participant was not acting as a caregiver during the entire seven days of the study period. The caregivers were previously informed about the research project with a full explanation of the risks and benefits of the procedure, both orally and in writing, and gave written consent prior to study participation. Hence, caregivers voluntarily participated in this study, and they were given the option and right to withdraw from it without consequence.Following previous research describing a music therapy intervention for caregivers [The participants were recruited by reference to the lists of patients included in the Palliative Care Assistance Process in the DIRAYA Digital Health Record maintained at the six primary care centres within the Malaga-Guadalhorce Health District (Andalusia, Spain). Family nurses then telephoned potential participants using convenience sampling.After the caregivers had been recruited, allocation to the groups was randomised by one of the researchers using 82 opaque envelopes. In 41 of these, the participant was assigned to the control group, and in the other 41 envelopes, the participant was assigned to the intervention group. The envelopes were closed and sealed, and then shuffled and numbered from 1 to 82. The investigator in charge then assigned an envelope to each caregiver, in chronological order, opening the envelope and associating the caregiver with the group specified in the envelope. Neither the study evaluators nor the caregivers participating in the study knew which group they belonged to.The present study was carried out from July 2020 to September 2021. No participants were lost to follow-up during the study. The flow chart for the study recruitment and procedure is presented in 