Vicki Conway: The transformative power of music in health care

MIKE LANDESS: “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks or bend the knotted oak.” That’s a quote from a 17th century playwright and poet, William Congreve. For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Medical professionals know the power of music as well, and that’s why, in the spring of 2021, the Music Department of UT Tyler partnered with UT Health East Texas to provide music in the lobby of the hospital there, and the UT Tyler senior lecturer of music, who helped make that program a reality, is our guest today. Welcome, Vicki Conway.

VICKI CONWAY: Thank you so much. It’s so nice to be here.

LANDESS: Good to have you here. You’ve taught piano at UT Tyler for nearly four decades. Tell us how you came upon the idea of music in the hospitals.

CONWAY: Sure. So, I was actually inspired by a keynote presentation at the Music Teachers National Association in the spring of 2021, which had to be virtual because of COVID. And so I was watching this delayed taping that they had done, and it was with Todd Frazier, who is the director for the Center of Performing Arts Medicine at St. Luke’s hospital in Houston. And so he was explaining all of the collaborations that they do in that hospital, and the hospital physicians would go to the Houston Ballet, would go to the Houston Symphony rehearsals and be there for the dancers and the musicians because we have so many repetitive movements that it’s very easy to have pain and injury from performing. And conversely, musicians would go into the hospitals. They actually had a hospital choir. They had a hospital orchestra, hospital staff…

LANDESS: This is in Houston?

CONWAY: This is in Houston. They had a hospital choir, a staff choir and a staff orchestra. And that was just so inspiring. And then they were talking about the music therapy applications and how it’s gone far beyond what the normal benefits for mental health to actually helping stroke victims learn how to talk again or help them get their gait back. If they’re having to relearn how to walk, having music playing while they walk can actually help to coordinate their, you know, muscular skeletal structure to perform better. And so I was just so inspired. And then the last piece was that because we were in still in the height of COVID, they have professional musicians on staff who would come in and be just playing music during the shift changes. So, 7 a.m., there’s a string quartet in the lobby playing music for all of the frontline workers on the pandemic.

LANDESS: Well, that’s amazing, and you were just talking about helping stroke victims. I was reading an article just recently about Alzheimer’s patients and that music being able to sing along with the words that for not being able to remember your granddaughter, or your grandson, but you remember the words to that song that’s embedded in your brain.

CONWAY: Exactly yeah. I think music is all over the brain. They have MRI scans of people performing music, and the entire brain lights up when you’re performing music. So, I think there’s enough branches that the brain is pulled in that helps that memory for the Alzheimer’s patients.

LANDESS: That’s really remarkable. You know, in preparing for this interview, I was curious about the benefits of music in a hospital setting, and I learned that one of the most important uses for music therapy is in pain management. I hadn’t heard that before. Music apparently doesn’t just distract the mind from pain, they found it can also cause the brain to reinterpret brain signals. That’s just remarkable.

CONWAY: That is remarkable. I had not heard that application, so that’s very exciting.

LANDESS: Well now, what’s been the response of the medical staff and the patients themselves to this music program?

CONWAY: So, we haven’t actually gone into hospital patient rooms, we’ve mainly been in the lobby. So, as people are waiting for their procedures or waiting on family members who are undergoing procedures, the response has just been overwhelmingly positive and very much appreciated.

LANDESS: Will that eventually become a program in which you can go into patients’ rooms or at least on the floor?

CONWAY: Yes, we are trying to work with upper administration to get permission to go into the hospital rooms. And I have an alumni who is a music therapist, who has just moved back to Tyler, who is interested in helping us kind of know how to do that, because we’ll have to train some of the students in what is appropriate and inappropriate. And so we’re still waiting on meeting with the hospital staff to see how all of that might come together. But yes, that is our plan.

LANDESS: Well, you would have to work with the hospital staff, too, to find, to identify the patients who would benefit from this and get permissions and that sort of thing.

CONWAY: Right. And so in the pediatric floor, if you have cancer patients who have extended hospital stays and things like that, people with extended stays, I think would be probably the most beneficial for us.

LANDESS: Now you’re using students in part of this. Well, how do the students see all of this? What do they think about it?

CONWAY: Oh, they love it. They love it. It gets them a chance to get out and perform. They don’t have to perform at the high classical level that they’re studying. They get to perform music that they love, that people just enjoy listening to, and so it’s a great performing experience for them. So it’s doubly beneficial, and then they absolutely get the same blessings of playing for others that others get from hearing them play.

LANDESS: This is an interesting situation. In past years I worked with a group called “Blue Star Connection.” They collect instruments from individual donations and sometimes music stars-guitars and keyboards and drums and that sort of thing. Then they take the instruments to kids who are in long-term hospital care. The feedback that it gives the kids is that it gives the kids something to focus on other than their illness.

CONWAY: Absolutely.

LANDESS: Now would they ever do a program? I wonder if they ever do a program like that here in Tyler?

CONWAY: Well, in our initial planning stages, one thing that we would like to do when we go into the hospital rooms is to engage the person there in making music, not just playing for them but give them a rhythm instrument…

LANDESS: The tambourine.

CONWAY: The tambourine, rhythm sticks, a hand drum, something that they can move and be expressive, along with whoever is there singing or playing for them.

LANDESS: Any final thoughts about this program that you’d like to share, in terms of where it is now and where you’d like for it to be in the future?

CONWAY: Absolutely. We just want this to grow. We have kind of a new name for our student performers. They’re going to be called “Patriots on Call.”

LANDESS: I like that.

CONWAY: Yes, and that’s actually modeled after a nonprofit organization called “Musicians on Call,” where professional musicians go into hospital rooms in mostly the larger cities, and so we kind of are modeling it after that.

LANDESS: It’s such a fabulous program and what a great idea.

CONWAY: Yeah, and so far, the upper administration has just been 100% on board and very excited to start this program and expand it.

LANDESS: Our guest has been Vicki Conway, senior lecturer in music at UT Tyler. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.