Music and Medicine

It’s the end of a long day on Internal Medicine Ward H (“Hey” in Hebrew) at Soroka Medical Center, in the desert city of Be’er Sheva, Israel.

I’m a third-year medical student at the Medical School for International Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and this is the floor I’ve been assigned to for my six-week internal-medicine clerkship—my very first clinical rotation.

My fellow students and I wrap up our responsibilities for the day and head to the student room to gather our things. Stowing my stethoscope and notebook in my bag, I exchange it for my guitar, sitting in a dusty corner. Then, guitar in hand, I lock the room and walk out onto the ward.

The medical staff, particularly the nurses, always react enthusiastically at the sight of the guitar. It’s like a new face showing up at a gathering of old friends–something fresh and exciting.

I stand outside the room of a recently admitted patient and wait for two of my classmates, Shira and Stephanie, to arrive from their respective wards.

As we enter the room, a man in a blue hospital gown sits on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor. He’s bent over, hands on his knees, as if starting to lift himself up off the bed—but somehow you just know that he’s been sitting like this for quite a while.

His downturned eyes lift tiredly when we introduce ourselves.

“Would you like to hear some music?” we ask.

A faint smile twitches on his lips, likely a simple formality; his eyes are still half shut and heavy with exhaustion.

Throughout the day, I know Mr. Peretz as a seventy-nine-year-old patient with a whole slew of chronic medical problems and a recent severe exacerbation of his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In this moment, though, I see Mr. Peretz not as a patient but simply as a person.

I play a few introductory notes on the guitar, and Shira, Stephanie and I begin to sing a popular old Israeli song:

Toda al kol ma sh’barata,
(Thank you for all that you created)

Toda al ma sh’li natata.
(Thank you for all that you have given me)

At the first few words, Mr. Peretz’s eyes widen. He stays bent over, but his mouth begins to move—to sing along:

Al tschok shel yeled
(For a child’s laughter)

Ushmei ha’tchelet…
(And the blue sky…)

He straightens slightly, sitting taller. I study his face for a moment. There is a sense of emerging recognition, depth, feeling. I wonder what is going on in his head, what memories are attached to these words and this tune, what is being brought to the surface.

Ha’bizutam, ani kayam.
(Because of all this, I exist.)

Ending chord. We smile and thank him.

“Toda, toda (Thank you, thank you),” he repeats several times, nodding. The lifeless eyes that greeted us when we arrived are now shining.

Shira, Stephanie and I move to the next room, where a teenage girl who’s undergoing a lengthy hospitalization sits with her parents. After chatting for a few minutes, we learn that, growing up, she lived in Portland, Oregon.

“Do you know Ed Sheeran?” I ask, hoping to conjure up musical common ground.

“YES!” Her eyes light up as she recognizes the name of a beloved singer and teen heartthrob.


I don’t deserve it, darling, you look perfect tonight….

Dad has his iPhone out and is filming us as we sing and play. Whatever his opinion of this gushy pop song, it clearly brings him great joy to see his daughter smiling. Mom holds on tight to Dad, a huge smile on her face, staring intently at her daughter, then at us, then at her daughter again. No words are spoken, but an overwhelmingly positive energy fills the air.

We make our way through the rest of the ward. There’s an elderly woman on a ventilator, encircled by her grandchildren, who request a song for her in her native Spanish; a Bedouin-Arab family whose members deluge us with sweets to express their gratitude after we sing an upbeat tune; a lone patient, a birthday balloon tied to his bedrail, who claps his hands as we sing “Happy Birthday.”

I have played music my whole life, but I never fully understood or appreciated what a raw gift it is until I started playing for patients—first as a premedical student back home at Boston Children’s Hospital, and now across the world at Soroka Medical Center.

Music is the closest thing to pure healing that I can imagine. Within the first moments of a song, the core of a human being can be touched, and with that, the deepest memories and emotions.

I’m sure you may have seen the videos of Alzheimer’s patients listening to music. (If not, please Google it!) Patients who can’t remember their own names can sing every word of “What a Wonderful World,” as performed by Louis Armstrong—and, more importantly, they come to life. This phenomenon may seem incomprehensible, even impossible, but it’s real. In my own music sessions with patients, I’ve seen it happen many times, and it never ceases to amaze me.

These moments are at the core of why I decided to go into health care.

Once I become a physician, I know that I most likely won’t be able to bring my guitar around with me on shifts—it may very well be inappropriate. In fact, as I continued through my clinical rotations this past year, I cut back on playing music for patients. I say that it’s because I got a lot busier, which is largely true; but it’s also because I started feeling less inspired. How sad is it that once we become a part of a healthcare team, the impulse to tend to our patients’ souls, as well as their bodies, begins to dwindle?

Is this loss of inspiration inevitable? I ask myself. What can I do to combat it?

As I begin my fourth year of medical school, these thoughts and questions are ongoing—and still unanswered.

I do hope that, one way or another, amid all of the dehumanizing pressures at work in health care, my fellow caregivers and I will find ways to acknowledge and celebrate our patients’ humanity, as well as our own. I can only promise myself and my patients that I’ll try my best to promote emotional and spiritual healing in my career as a physician—whether or not I have a guitar in my hand.