The Sound of Music: Transforming Medical Students into Reflective Practitioners

Abstract

<p style="text-align:justify;"> There is a growing focus on the introduction of courses in humanities in medical education. Music is not a widely-used tool in medical education. It has unique features that make it an excellent educational resource for the possibility to express emotions. Within minutes, topics of interest in learning medicine, such as loss, compassion, sorrow, and solidarity can be identified and used in pedagogical processes. Music—like other art forms—can deal with the emotional universe of the student. Promoting a reflective attitude within an academic discipline requires the creation of space to make it formal. The Public Health Department of Jundiai Medical School (Sao Paulo, Brazil) offers a special course on family medicine core values, led by a SOBRAMFA Medical Education & Humanism faculty member. The process of understanding a student’s experience has allowed for the unveiling of a phenomenon that encompasses the student’s inner world as he/she attends to his/her medical training. The music is played on the outside resonates with the story and emotions of the student. Students realize that the pace imposed by the medical school does not allow them to reflect on either their own lives or their formation. The musical experience allows students to hear their feelings and share them with the professor and peers. They are surprised by memories and feelings that surface that they were unaware of or could not remember. These feelings are presented in themes that organize the affective experience of students, mobilized by the music. Several themes have emerged, such as the search for the self; family; vocational doubts; relationships with peers, professors, and patients. The findings of the experience of the music spectrum come in, offering numerous prospects for development in the context of medical education, as noted in the themes that emerged. As the basic experience we have of the world is emotional, the music—this form of human knowledge of affective tone—also becomes educational force, because the teaching process is not limited to transmission of content. Instead, more importantly, it implies that the teacher in development processes of meaning and significance enable the learner to reflect and transform the everyday practice, especially in medicine, where the interpersonal relationship is the basis for the full realization of future professional action. </p

Music in medical education: A critical interpretive synthesis

“…Table 1 presents a summary of examples of music in medical education included in the synthesis. A total of 52 music programmes/ activities were documented, with several programmes described in more than one article 84,85,88,89,92,93,103,104 and one article describing two discrete programmes/activities. 97 There was a modest trend towards a greater number of relevant articles being published in recent years, as well as an apparent bias towards selection of articles from nations where English is the first language, particularly the USA.…”

“…Interpretivist studies, with the exception of Nemoy 109 and Ledger and Joynes, 114 tended to lack reflexivity and sometimes had methodological incongruities, such as between methodology and research question, 113 epistemology 108 or analysis and presentation of data. 93 Thirty-five categories and seven themes were identified through inductive analysis as interrelated 'rationales' for offering music in medical education (Table 2 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2. Supplementary Table 1 includes evidence from source texts informing categories and themes, whereas the mapping of themes back upon source texts in Supplementary Table 2 helped make visible the alignment of categories with themes shown in Table 2).…”

“…Additionally, the majority of objectivist studies (again, with the exception of Haidet et al 110 and Bellier et al 119 ) relied upon on self‐report measures only. Interpretivist studies, with the exception of Nemoy 109 and Ledger and Joynes, 114 tended to lack reflexivity and sometimes had methodological incongruities, such as between methodology and research question, 113 epistemology 108 or analysis and presentation of data 93 …”

Perceptions of Healthcare Undergraduate Students about a Hospital Clown Training

“…The current paradigm of healthcare education demands an ensemble of technical and interpersonal competencies, which are developed in many scenarios, comprehending formal, parallel and hidden curricula (Nogueira-Martins et al, 2006). Regarding interpersonal competencies, there are many approaches being executed in healthcare universities in order to teach empathy, teamwork and interpersonal abilities , and some of them are based on arts and humanities, such as music (Janaudis et al, 2013), theatre (Hammer et al, 2011), movies (Blasco, 2011) and literature (Evans, 2003). The clowning experience is inserted in this context.…”

The “Palliative Soul”: Music Therapy, End of Life Care, and Humanizing the Patient

“…In recent years, medical humanism has taken root as a movement toward patientcentered care, emphasizing values such as patient dignity and autonomy (Hartzband & Groopman, 2009). Art modalities such as literature, the visual arts, and music have been utilized in medical educational settings as tools for teaching humanism, with several educators citing music's emphasis on values such as fostering relationships, expressing emotions, and promoting human dignity as its relevance to medical training (Hanes & Newell, 2003;Janaudis, Fleming, & Blasco 2013;van Roessel & Shafer, 2006).…”