The power of music is comforting patients undergoing palliative care, helping them and their loved ones through an extremely emotional and difficult time.
Stanford University medical student and musician Melanie Ambler is doing a research project to study how music can alleviate some of that stress. Ambler is taking a year off school to interview 100 patients and play music for them.
Ambler visits each one in their hospital room, asks them a question, and then composes an original song on her cello for them during their visit together.
“I like to tell my patients that I play music that is improvised and inspired by whatever they tell me,” said Ambler. “It’s my most active form of listening.”
Ambler met 46-year-old Tasha Tevis, who has end-stage kidney failure, while she was in the ICU. Ambler started their session by asking Tevis a question.
Ambler: “What does art mean to you?”
Tevis: “Art to me is beauty.”