July 11th 2017 marks a proud day for me personally and for the new specialty of “Medical Musician”.
Last fall I received a phone call from New York City guitarist Andrew Schulman. He told me the remarkable story, which is the subject of his book, “Waking the Spirit”. In essence, how complications after a major surgery left him clinically dead for a few minutes and how a great medical team, and then a decision by his wife Wendy to play music for him while he was terminally ill in a coma, saved his life. I highly recommend this inspirational and well-written book! Among other things it has received a great review in The New York Times and was chosen as one of the top three books of 2016 by the Oliver Sacks Foundation.
After recovering from this ordeal, and with permission from Dr. Marvin McMillen who was then the Director of the Surgical ICU where his life was saved, Andrew returned to Beth Israel Medical Center and began playing for critically ill patients. (He continued there for seven years – last February he became Resident Musician/Critical Care at NYU Langone Medical Center). In 2014 Dr. McMillen became Chief of Perioperative Care at Berkshire Medical Center (BMC) in Pittsfield, MA. In January 2016 Andrew started a residency there, going once a month for three days each visit. Over these years he and McMillen developed the specialty they call Medical Musician.
In my initial phone call with Andrew he told me that Dr. Joseph Pfeifer, a surgeon at BMC whose son I’d given guitar lessons to, had recommended me as a possible candidate for training as a medical musician. I have spent a significant amount of time in hospitals to be with loved ones so this suggestion resonated deeply with me.
I began meeting and training with Andrew and Dr. McMillen. With generous support from Southern Vermont College President David Evans, I eventually produced an event at the Oldcastle Theatre in Bennington, VT which featured the film documentary “Andrew & Wendy” about Andrew’s story, and a presentation by Andrew, Dr. McMillen, and myself.
After months of work with them I was ready to get started. This past week I logged ten hours playing for critically ill patients at BMC and will return there in two weeks for 50 hours of training with four other musicians enrolled in the first annual Medical Musician Initiative Workshop, cosponsored by the hospital.
I am deeply humbled and grateful to have been chosen by Andrew and Dr. McMillen to be their first student trained as a medical musician. I have so much still to learn on this profound journey of healing.
Melodies to Heal
Music intervention helps critically ill patients
Andrew Schulman, right, plays with Eric Despard at BMC with Dr. Marvin McMillen in the background and Elena Fyfe, surgical physician assistant.
PHOTO BY CHRISTINA RAHR LANE
For 40 years, Andrew Schulman has played classical guitar in venues like the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel and Carnegie Hall. The last seven years, though, his stage has been much more intimate as he has made the rounds of three hospital ICUs, two in New York City and one at Berkshire Medical Center (BMC). This latest gig is his most challenging and most rewarding—for it’s the same arena where music saved his life.
These “medical residencies” grew out of Schulman’s near-death experience and Dr. Marvin McMillen’s interest in the healing environment. Although a study a few years back published in The Lancet showed that listening to music before, during, or after surgery reduces patients’ pain and anxiety and decreases the need for pain medication, the ICU hadn’t been a place where many musicians played.
A “medical musician,” as Schulman and McMillen call it, is different from a music therapist who might, for example, work with newborn babies, chemo patients, and children with asthma. A medical musician is a concert-level professional who has had medical training and is part of a medical team in an intensive-care unit. The critical-care environment is unique because the music must sound as clear and precise as a recording so as not to agitate the patient or the unit. Achieving this goal and striking the right emotional balance can be challenging.
“Music can be as important as a ventilator in an intensive-care unit. It can be as important as a dialysis machine, or as important as the medications we treat people’s blood pressure with,” says McMillen.
And it’s important that the musician checks his or her ego before entering the ICU. Musicians aren’t just playing for the person who is ill; family members and the staff are also in need of music to help them relax and get a break from the intensity of the situation.
Schulman says music saved his life eight years ago at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in downtown Manhattan. At 57, he was admitted as a terminal “Code Blue” patient with circulatory collapse following a pancreatic-tumor excision. His wife, Wendy, had an iPod loaded with music. Something moved him when he heard Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and, miraculously, he survived his ordeal.
McMillen, director of the surgical ICU at the time, knew that Schulman wanted to return there and play for patients. He gave him permission to do so and, six months later, Schulman was back with guitar in hand. He now has logged nearly 1,800 hours of playing time in the ICUs. His book, Waking the Spirit, was released a year ago and is now available in Australia and New Zealand. It will be translated for release in Turkey in June and China in early 2018, and a paperback version of the book will be released in August. Schulman is now touring again, performing and talking about the power of music to heal the body.
McMillen moved his practice to the Berkshires in January 2016 to work at a community hospital and further develop the medical musicianship. Although music is piped into the ICU through of Spotify and Pandora at BMC, McMillen believes live music is a better “prescription” for patients’ well-being. In January 2016, he had Schulman talk to doctors and other specialists during grand rounds. Next, Schulman played in the Critical Care Unit so that the staff could see him in action. Now, the last week of every month, Schulman drives to the Berkshires, and McMillen puts him up. In addition to playing three days a month at BMC, Schulman is also the resident musician in the Critical Care Units at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.
“Music takes you out of this hostile, unfamiliar world and reconnects you with life,” says McMillen, 67, chief of preoperative care at BMC.
Musicians work with several different types of patients: those in pain and under sedation; older patients who are confused; those who are recovering; and those who need a ritual of saying goodbye.
“There’s no question that music decreases the need for pain control and sedation,” says McMillen. “With older patients, especially in ICU, there’s a significant decrease in ICU psychosis when music is introduced.”
Schulman and McMillen have created the Medical Musician Initiative, with BMC as their sponsor. McMillen also received a small grant from New York City’s Kaplan Foundation. He hopes to expand the program so it runs throughout the month, and he and Schulman are creating a textbook and curriculum, with the goal of having a course formalized and certification awarded for what might be called Certified Medical Musician (CMM). They have already raised the interest of schools like the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, and Boston University, which already is building a relationship with BMC and has close ties to the area with Tanglewood.
Schulman is eager to start training others. On July 24, two groups of individuals, musicians and physicians, will be a part of a workshop. So far, the musicians include Eric Despard, music director at Southern Vermont College with three decades of professional concert experience, whose wife is a two time survivor of cancer; Peter Argondizza from Long Island; Richard Francis, a cellist from Maine; and Michael Bard from Washington, D.C.
“This workshop is an opportunity to see whether they are interested in this, and how it would work as far as teaching, and we’ll go from there,” says Schulman. He and McMillen are putting together a glossary of what musicians need to know when they walk into an intensive-care unit.
“We know the medical side of it, and some of us have been patients, and we realize how a trained musician can bring something to the table,” says McMillen, himself a kidney-transplant recipient. “We’ve got everyone’s attention, and now we need to make it teachable, marketable, sustainable.”
Medical Musician Presents at Oldcastle
BENNINGTON — When art and science work together, outcomes for patients can improve drastically. No one knows that better than Andrew Schulman.
Schulman was the subject of the 2014 documentary “Andrew & Wendy,” by producer and director Josh Aronson.
“(Schulman’s) conditioned worsened in the ICU and his doctors tried every medical solution to heal him, to no avail. He was on his way out,” reads the description on the filmmakers website, “Andrew’s wife, Wendy, asked the doctors what she could do. They told her his brain was still active, and she could talk to him, to try to connect. But after 2 days of her constant monologue — nothing. But then, exhausted, and distraught, she had an inspiration. Wendy knew Andrew’s deepest connection to the universe was with music, not the sound of her voice. So, as a last ditch effort, she put headphones on him and played his favorite sacred music — Bach’s ‘St. Mathew’s Passion.’ Within hours doctors saw that Andrew’s body functions had stabilized, and the doctors reported he was coming back; he woke up a few days later. Remarkably, both his traditionally trained surgeons agreed that it was the music that turned him around.”
Schulman spoke at Oldcastle Theatre on Wednesday, along with Dr. Marvin McMillen, who was a surgeon in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in New York, where Schulman had his miraculous recovery and co-founded the Medical Musician’s Initiative with Schulman, and Eric Despard, Southern Vermont College’s director of music and one of the first to be trained as a medical musician by Schulman and McMillen.
“The power that music has to heal can be extraordinary in certain cases,” said Schulman, who decided to give back to the hospital by playing for patients in the SICU at Beth Israel. He ended up staying in the position for three years, and came to realize that his efforts were producing real tangible results in lowering the stress of patients and their families. He currently plays regularly at a different New York hospital, and makes occasional trips to play at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield. “My goal is to let that person leave the hospital for awhile,” he said.
“In every known culture throughout history, music was an important part of medicine,” said Schulman, “This remained true until the 17th and especially 18th century.”
McMillen, who is currently a trauma surgeon at BMC, said that he has seen firsthand the positive effects music can have on his patients. “Music takes you out of this alien, cold, hostile world and reconnects you to the world you’re familiar with,” he said, adding that there is “no question” that music, whether performed live or personally directed music on an iPod, decreases the need for sedation and pain medication. He suggested that medical musicians are most effective as an integrated part of the team of doctors, nurses, and staff.
Schulman and Despard each performed songs on the guitar as part of the presentation, which included a screening of the documentary.
The event was presented by SVC’s humanities and nursing departments. President David Evans thanked Oldcastle for hosting the event, and spoke highly of the ongoing relationship between the theater and the college.
Schulman is the author of “Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul.” The Bennington Bookshop had copies of the book for sale after the presentation, and Schulman and McMillen stayed afterward to sign copies.
Reach staff writer Derek Carson at 802-447-7567, ext. 122 or @DerekCarsonBB
“The Art and Science of Medical Music” Performance and Discussion
Southern Vermont College (SVC) will host a presentation of music and discussion entitled “The Art and Science of Medical Music” by author/musician Andrew Schulman, Dr. Marvin McMillen, MD, and guest Eric Despard, as well as a showing of the documentary, “Andrew & Wendy,” on Wednesday, March 29, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Oldcastle Theatre. The film and talk are free and open to the public.
The 30-minute biographical film, produced by Academy Award nominee Josh Aronson (2014), tells the story of a New York Upper West Side couple at a crisis point. Andrew, who is in a coma, is not responding to anything. Knowing his deep connection to music, his wife, Wendy, decides to play Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” on his ipod for him, which in turn brings him back, a miraculous outcome even acknowledged by his doctors.
This story analyzes the mysterious healing power of music and what inspired Schulman and McMillen to found the Medical Musician’s Initiative, with Schulman bringing music to other desperately ill patients. SVC’s Music Director and Assistant Professor Despard, a classical guitarist and Yale School of Music graduate, is the first person to be trained by Schulman and McMillen. Despard will participate in the panel and also perform a Prelude by Bach on the guitar.
Schulman is the former resident musician in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in New York City and is the current medical musician at New York University’s Langone Medical Center and Berkshire Medical Center. He is the founder and artistic director of the Abaca String Band, which has performed throughout the United States. He is also a solo guitarist and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, The Royal Albert Hall in London, the White House, and the Improv Comedy Club. Schulman has also written “Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul.” The Bennington Bookshop will have books available at the event to be signed.
Dr. McMillen is a trauma surgeon at Berkshire Medical Center and formerly of Beth Israel where Schulman was a patient. As co-founder with Schulman of the Medical Musician’s Initiative and a fervent proponent that music can help heal, McMillen wrote the forward in Schulman’s book.
This presentation is sponsored by SVC, including the Division of Humanities and Division of Nursing. For more information, contact Professor Despard at edespard@svc.edu or 802-681-2889.