Since 2012, a team combining nursing, psychology, sociology and engineering has been engaged in an action research project on the development and impact of a device for listening to music in intensive care rooms in Swiss and French psychiatric hospitals. This article was designed as an exercise in self-reflection. It traces the origins of this action research, revealing its background and inner workings. It reports how the project actually proceeded, with its successes, its challenges and its difficulties. Finally, it raised the main issues that were central to the research and asked in which conditions an action research project is even possible, especially in a hospital environment and in psychiatry.