Chicken Soup for EPs' Souls
2023; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 45; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1097/01.eem.0000997348.41993.7d
ISSN1552-3624
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Musicological Studies
ResumoFigure: music, workplace, EPs, ED, Christmas music, emergency departmentsFigureI first learned to enjoy music in church. Listening to hymns was just part of my life. My father had a fine baritone voice and was always singing. It had been his dream to be a professional singer, and he often sang in the car or played gospel shows on television on Sunday morning (when we weren't watching “Rocky and Bullwinkle”). He later became a pastor and sang in church concerts. One of his brothers was a geologist and a composer of choral music. The first music I ever received from my parents was a Carpenters album. It seemed a little odd for a grade-school kid, but honestly the Carpenters killed it in the '70s, and I stand by that. I still tear up when I think about Karen's demise and listen to “I Won't Last a Day Without You.” My tastes became a little more unique later on. From Cat Stevens to Gregorian chants, with the Eagles and Styx thrown in for late '70s good measure. My wife, Jan, has always been a true classic rocker, and The Who and Pink Floyd were formative in her musical journey. Her knowledge of rock history is truly encyclopedic. Jan has widened my tastes over the years by taking me to many wonderful concerts. We've seen Phil Collins, The Rolling Stones, U2, Billy Joel, and Coldplay, and we recently saw Peter Gabriel in Boston, who reminded us that age is not a limit on creativity. A few years ago, we went to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival where we camped for three days and enjoyed new and old acts of all genres while we stepped around those experiencing chemical concerts and fell asleep to the sound of electronic dance music. All of this is to say that music is a common background of my life. Likewise, it is present in most emergency departments. I don't know any place where there isn't a speaker somewhere, although like water bottles and food at our desks there is no doubt a committee of scolds trying to prove how bad music is for patient safety. Metal and Disco We have a mixture of tastes where I work, of course. We have a night physician who loves metal and another who loves old-school country. We have a PA who dies a little inside whenever she hears music that involves rhymes of “tear and beer” but comes to life with disco. I'm still quirky when it comes to music. A few months ago, I was playing some Bach and one nurse accosted me, saying, “That sounds like something Hannibal Lecter would play while he ate someone!” Another told me I could play whatever I liked, so it was Highland Pipes for the win. She surrendered after 30 minutes and said she couldn't bear it anymore. (One of our sons plays the pipes, so it's standard for me ... although our dogs do howl a bit.) I think music, like food or dark humor, is just one of those comforts we need in a place of remarkable stress. We can't control the volume, the acuity, or really even the resources we have at hand. But sometimes we can control what we hear at our desks, even if just for a little while. And it may be that we deeply crave something to cover the soundtrack of our work. That background noise can be difficult to handle. I sometimes feel as if the staccato of keystrokes will drive me crazy. It is now the sound of medicine, the faint percussion section of our lives. We live with the whoosh of the ambulance door, the strain of hydraulic stretchers struggling to move ever larger patients. There is the constant sound of someone confused or crying out in pain or the rare stillness suddenly punctuated by anger or profanity. There is often the sobbing of loss. Music covers those sounds a little, although it can't silence them. Maybe it can just dull them a little and give our frantic brains some transient solace in the eight or 12 hours that our ears are constantly assailed by cacophony of the modern hospital. Music for Long Nights It is now December. Many departments echo with Christmas music. We're often told we can't put up decorations due to the fire hazard, but sounds rarely cause conflagration. So we will spend the month with “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” and the soundtracks of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and maybe a little from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” But now and then I'll slip in some things that particularly give me peace. I'm still old school, like my dad and my uncle. I'll linger over “O Holy Night” with its powerful words of redemption. Or I'll enjoy the gentility of “Away in a Manger.” And for all of the season I'll return again and again to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” one of the most ancient hymns of Christendom, chanted or sung by my spiritual ancestors for at least 1200 years. All of it is meant to offer some comfort in the chaos and some meaning in a season when we will spend a lot of the festive season in a place of suffering. Our work is a kind of complex musical arrangement, part opera, part requiem, part rock concert, part rave, a lot of ballet, and a little musical theater thrown in for good measure. It's little wonder we so often add music to the mix because every little pleasure, every little soothing thing, not only helps us, it helps us to do our work better through the long days and longer nights. Merry Christmas, brothers and sisters! DR. LEAP practices emergency medicine in rural South Carolina, and is the author of the column, Life and Limb (https://edwinleap.substack.com) and a blog (http://edwinleap.com). Follow him on X @edwin_leap, and read his past EMN columns at http://bit.ly/EMN-Emergistan. Share this article on X and Facebook. Access the links in EMN by reading this on our website: www.EM-News.com. Comments? Write to us at [email protected].
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