when I was in fourth grade I used to go
to my friend’s house after school and I
just remember how her and her sister
would always be fighting they’d have an
argument and then go into their separate
rooms and I do remember however there
was one time where it was different and
they came together to play a piano duet
and for the first time instead of
fighting there was laughter and fluidity
coming from that piano bench and I
remember that made an impression on me I
think because growing up I was a bit of
a misfit I was the daughter of
immigrants from China and I had to fight
accent so I was always asking that
question for myself how do I get to know
you better and music just seems to be a
way to connect so easily
so I went back home talked to my parents
that do you think I could learn piano
and lo and behold eventually for my 9th
birthday present I ended up getting
probably the nerdiest gift a nine year
old could ask for piano lessons so the
theme of a conference today is X&Y and
that question of why music has followed
me I feel really lucky I was able to
study music psychology and research that
and I was also able to bring music as I
entered medical school and when I
entered medical school the question of
how do I get to know you naturally
became that question how do we get to
know each other better
especially in a context like medicine
where often times were expected to be
strong and invulnerable and so it’s easy
for us to put up laws and go into
ourselves and that has implications
that’s damaging for the
physician-patient relationship but also
relationships between my classmates
colleagues in the medical profession and
I think that this going into ourselves
is something that a lot of systems and
institutions face so in the next 15
minutes I want to try to make the case
that one music is something that they’ll
usually thought of as a form of
entertainment can be a solution towards
an interpersonal approach that we need
and I’m going to give medicine as one
example of that and second I want to
make the point that music is something
that we can all be a part of and be a
part of creating and to illustrate both
of these points I’m going to describe a
collaborative songwriting process to get
into this process I’m gonna start with a
song and a story and that’s a story
between Mike who is a medical student
and Katherine who is a patient and
they’re both wearing pins purple ribbon
ribbons in support of pancreatic cancer
so in this process what happens is Mike
and Katherine come together and they
have a conversation with each other for
example they find out that they both
have a love of cats and that Katherine
the patient has this cat named corona
and she really identifies with this cat
in terms of the cat spirit and being
fearless and landing on your feet and so
Mike then goes back home and imagines
that experience related to his own and
writes a song the song’s title is
[Music]
so you get this really fun song and you
can imagine how special it was for them
to come back together and I support
group setting and share that song with
each other and share that song as well
with the other students and patients
involved and that’s when they took this
photo here she check out her little
photo of the cat and they’re all wearing
their ribbons and it was just that very
special connection and interpersonal
relationship they had there and also it
changed the whole atmosphere of the
group as well so how do we get more of
these kinds of interactions connections
and also atmospheres going on into our
settings or institutions or systems and
before we can address that and see why
that’s important we have to see why it’s
been a problem in medicine empathy has
shown to be declining throughout medical
training especially in the clinical year
of medical school and throughout
internship and residency and it’s not
just a problem that the medical
profession faces indeed even among
college students we’ve seen that
throughout the generations empathy has
been declining based on self-reported
measures of empathy and cohort
comparison studies and the decline has
been especially drastic in the in the
21st century and along with this has
been a rise in loneliness in 2017-2018
now in fact loneliness has been declared
a public health epidemic by the former
US Surgeon General loneliness is
associated with a risk for mortality
similar to that of smoking 15 cigarettes
per day and even in the UK we see as
well at the beginning of 2018 we have a
minister for lonliness appointed so we
can see that this is an issue social
connection the decline of empathy and
it’s worth looking at how it’s been
addressed and what interventions have
been done and usually these
interventions focus on empathy
development as a trait so they start
looking at how we can improve levels of
empathy within each person but this can
be damaging in the sense that if social
connection is one problem if we focus it
on put the burden on the individual that
tends to isolate individuals even more
so maybe this isn’t the answer and it’s
true that research hasn’t shown this to
be effective and it’s been inclusive
however there’s some really interesting
psychology research that suggests that
rather than targeting each individual
target the interpersonal atmosphere and
relationships and expectations that are
in that system so for example they’ve
done an intervention programme across 56
schools which in order to target
bullying and the reduction of bullying
rather than targeting each person and
trying to say you know bullying is not
okay in that way target that atmosphere
and change the ways in which we say in
general bullying is not allowed and they
found that when you change the
atmosphere then you get the decline in
disciplinary reports or disruptive
reports behaviors and they found that
these reports declined by 30% so we see
that interpersonal relationships in
these atmospheres and expectations are
important and it’s the kind of thing
that happens for example we saw in the
music in the collaborative songwriting
process between Mike and between the
patient Katherine so the next step then
is to study and expand and systematize
that
I lead a nonprofit and that’s what we’re
trying to do expanding this
collaborative songwriting process and we
started with students and patients
across hospitals across medical schools
starting in New York and we’ve also been
working with high school students
college students veterans children in
foster care and at the core of it is
trying to create that interpersonal
relationship with communication at the
core and Kelsey n is one of the
participants she’s a nursing student who
participated and she’s able to really
describe this kind of intangible that
happens in one of these settings this
project was it didn’t directly
incentivize that that was part of the
culture part of the atmosphere and like
membership in that atmosphere in that
community mandated like some incentive
her love and and she’s giving love in
the song as soon as like those barriers
have been broken down by do the
experience of sharing and being
vulnerable through song the absence of
those barriers kind of like created an
intimacy that I don’t often feel among
people I’ve known for
time so casseon really describes that
atmosphere change and that kind of
incentive for love that was felt so if I
now you might be nodding along to the
idea that interpersonal connections are
important and an approach is important
and music might be that a key part for
that and I see some of you have been
nodding along as well and so I’m nodding
and you’re nodding your niece once and
that actually creates somewhat of a
change in the atmosphere of this room as
well and the reason why I’m bringing up
this whole nodding thing is because
nonverbal communication and music are
quite similar in terms of different
forms of relational communication and
that brings me to my second point which
is that music is something that we can
all be a part of and create so when I’m
nodding and you’re nodding and I nod
back there’s a certain kind of timing to
that and it’s a timing that when we’re
doing that in sync promotes affiliation
and another aspect of what happens when
you’re doing some movement like this
very process is that there’s mimicry
involved so you’re mimicking each
other’s movements and it’s been found
that when we mimic and we were in
synchrony that promotes bonding and
affiliation and you have a lot of that
in music as well when we’re making music
so if I’m playing making some kind of
sound someone else copies that or
similarities and dynamics and then of
course there’s the rhythm part that gets
us in sync so music actually is this
very natural way of communicating and
forming bonds with each other and it’s
even more so very natural when we focus
on the communication relation part of it
and that’s what Kaylee a high school
student shows us when she imagines a
story of a voter and she connected with
and this veteran shares his story and
she takes some notes about what he wants
to pretty month to convey which includes
messages like hanging
there he used to be a Navy worked yeah
in the Navy and he stirs a story about
his wife who had passed away about seven
years ago and this is a song that Kaylee
writes is gone you see he has this
beautiful beautiful song that she’s
kidding
and it’s even more beautiful because she
has never
before this is a first time doing this
but at the same time a lot of you might
be thinking you know I can’t sing like
that I you know I’ve never had really
formal musical training and a lot of the
people who work with actually have no
musical training either and it takes
something as simple as a beats me and
creativity with your voice and that’s
what I Jenn who’s another High School
student does here snowpiercer sure it’s
cut my skin but we’re trudging forward
marching on surviving go where so I just
used a free online program that’s
accessible to anyone and wrote this for
as well with a veteran and I think he
has a really important message which is
life unclasped and that at the key is at
the heart of what we’re doing is they’re
trying to unclasp beyond the divides
that separate us and when we realize
that we can all be storytellers and
songwriters because at the core what
this is about is interpersonal and
relation and relationship we can come
together because it goes back to that
question how do I get to know you better
so I have this wise mentor of mine and I
went to him once thinking that saying I
figured it out I know what it is that I
want to do and I started saying what I
want to do is I know that my heart is in
music and he said immediately no it’s
not that your heart is in music but that
music is in your heart and I realized
that it wasn’t just music it was those
people as the sisters in the piano bench
it was the patients and my classmates
and the children the veterans these are
all parts of our hearts and in our
hearts we have spaces for a lot of these
areas
and I heard sorry stronger when they
come together and intersect so it
doesn’t have to be one or the other and
it doesn’t have to be one identity or
the other healing across divides is one
of the biggest challenges facing us
today not just in medicine but in
politics in religions in ideologies and
if we cut each other off
how does cut ourselves off we do a
but music heals at its core is a very
natural form of relating and
communication so let us join in let us
celebrate our stories each one of which
deserves to be heard together thank you [Applause]
to my friend’s house after school and I
just remember how her and her sister
would always be fighting they’d have an
argument and then go into their separate
rooms and I do remember however there
was one time where it was different and
they came together to play a piano duet
and for the first time instead of
fighting there was laughter and fluidity
coming from that piano bench and I
remember that made an impression on me I
think because growing up I was a bit of
a misfit I was the daughter of
immigrants from China and I had to fight
accent so I was always asking that
question for myself how do I get to know
you better and music just seems to be a
way to connect so easily
so I went back home talked to my parents
that do you think I could learn piano
and lo and behold eventually for my 9th
birthday present I ended up getting
probably the nerdiest gift a nine year
old could ask for piano lessons so the
theme of a conference today is X&Y and
that question of why music has followed
me I feel really lucky I was able to
study music psychology and research that
and I was also able to bring music as I
entered medical school and when I
entered medical school the question of
how do I get to know you naturally
became that question how do we get to
know each other better
especially in a context like medicine
where often times were expected to be
strong and invulnerable and so it’s easy
for us to put up laws and go into
ourselves and that has implications
that’s damaging for the
physician-patient relationship but also
relationships between my classmates
colleagues in the medical profession and
I think that this going into ourselves
is something that a lot of systems and
institutions face so in the next 15
minutes I want to try to make the case
that one music is something that they’ll
usually thought of as a form of
entertainment can be a solution towards
an interpersonal approach that we need
and I’m going to give medicine as one
example of that and second I want to
make the point that music is something
that we can all be a part of and be a
part of creating and to illustrate both
of these points I’m going to describe a
collaborative songwriting process to get
into this process I’m gonna start with a
song and a story and that’s a story
between Mike who is a medical student
and Katherine who is a patient and
they’re both wearing pins purple ribbon
ribbons in support of pancreatic cancer
so in this process what happens is Mike
and Katherine come together and they
have a conversation with each other for
example they find out that they both
have a love of cats and that Katherine
the patient has this cat named corona
and she really identifies with this cat
in terms of the cat spirit and being
fearless and landing on your feet and so
Mike then goes back home and imagines
that experience related to his own and
writes a song the song’s title is
[Music]
so you get this really fun song and you
can imagine how special it was for them
to come back together and I support
group setting and share that song with
each other and share that song as well
with the other students and patients
involved and that’s when they took this
photo here she check out her little
photo of the cat and they’re all wearing
their ribbons and it was just that very
special connection and interpersonal
relationship they had there and also it
changed the whole atmosphere of the
group as well so how do we get more of
these kinds of interactions connections
and also atmospheres going on into our
settings or institutions or systems and
before we can address that and see why
that’s important we have to see why it’s
been a problem in medicine empathy has
shown to be declining throughout medical
training especially in the clinical year
of medical school and throughout
internship and residency and it’s not
just a problem that the medical
profession faces indeed even among
college students we’ve seen that
throughout the generations empathy has
been declining based on self-reported
measures of empathy and cohort
comparison studies and the decline has
been especially drastic in the in the
21st century and along with this has
been a rise in loneliness in 2017-2018
now in fact loneliness has been declared
a public health epidemic by the former
US Surgeon General loneliness is
associated with a risk for mortality
similar to that of smoking 15 cigarettes
per day and even in the UK we see as
well at the beginning of 2018 we have a
minister for lonliness appointed so we
can see that this is an issue social
connection the decline of empathy and
it’s worth looking at how it’s been
addressed and what interventions have
been done and usually these
interventions focus on empathy
development as a trait so they start
looking at how we can improve levels of
empathy within each person but this can
be damaging in the sense that if social
connection is one problem if we focus it
on put the burden on the individual that
tends to isolate individuals even more
so maybe this isn’t the answer and it’s
true that research hasn’t shown this to
be effective and it’s been inclusive
however there’s some really interesting
psychology research that suggests that
rather than targeting each individual
target the interpersonal atmosphere and
relationships and expectations that are
in that system so for example they’ve
done an intervention programme across 56
schools which in order to target
bullying and the reduction of bullying
rather than targeting each person and
trying to say you know bullying is not
okay in that way target that atmosphere
and change the ways in which we say in
general bullying is not allowed and they
found that when you change the
atmosphere then you get the decline in
disciplinary reports or disruptive
reports behaviors and they found that
these reports declined by 30% so we see
that interpersonal relationships in
these atmospheres and expectations are
important and it’s the kind of thing
that happens for example we saw in the
music in the collaborative songwriting
process between Mike and between the
patient Katherine so the next step then
is to study and expand and systematize
that
I lead a nonprofit and that’s what we’re
trying to do expanding this
collaborative songwriting process and we
started with students and patients
across hospitals across medical schools
starting in New York and we’ve also been
working with high school students
college students veterans children in
foster care and at the core of it is
trying to create that interpersonal
relationship with communication at the
core and Kelsey n is one of the
participants she’s a nursing student who
participated and she’s able to really
describe this kind of intangible that
happens in one of these settings this
project was it didn’t directly
incentivize that that was part of the
culture part of the atmosphere and like
membership in that atmosphere in that
community mandated like some incentive
her love and and she’s giving love in
the song as soon as like those barriers
have been broken down by do the
experience of sharing and being
vulnerable through song the absence of
those barriers kind of like created an
intimacy that I don’t often feel among
people I’ve known for
time so casseon really describes that
atmosphere change and that kind of
incentive for love that was felt so if I
now you might be nodding along to the
idea that interpersonal connections are
important and an approach is important
and music might be that a key part for
that and I see some of you have been
nodding along as well and so I’m nodding
and you’re nodding your niece once and
that actually creates somewhat of a
change in the atmosphere of this room as
well and the reason why I’m bringing up
this whole nodding thing is because
nonverbal communication and music are
quite similar in terms of different
forms of relational communication and
that brings me to my second point which
is that music is something that we can
all be a part of and create so when I’m
nodding and you’re nodding and I nod
back there’s a certain kind of timing to
that and it’s a timing that when we’re
doing that in sync promotes affiliation
and another aspect of what happens when
you’re doing some movement like this
very process is that there’s mimicry
involved so you’re mimicking each
other’s movements and it’s been found
that when we mimic and we were in
synchrony that promotes bonding and
affiliation and you have a lot of that
in music as well when we’re making music
so if I’m playing making some kind of
sound someone else copies that or
similarities and dynamics and then of
course there’s the rhythm part that gets
us in sync so music actually is this
very natural way of communicating and
forming bonds with each other and it’s
even more so very natural when we focus
on the communication relation part of it
and that’s what Kaylee a high school
student shows us when she imagines a
story of a voter and she connected with
and this veteran shares his story and
she takes some notes about what he wants
to pretty month to convey which includes
messages like hanging
there he used to be a Navy worked yeah
in the Navy and he stirs a story about
his wife who had passed away about seven
years ago and this is a song that Kaylee
writes is gone you see he has this
beautiful beautiful song that she’s
kidding
and it’s even more beautiful because she
has never
before this is a first time doing this
but at the same time a lot of you might
be thinking you know I can’t sing like
that I you know I’ve never had really
formal musical training and a lot of the
people who work with actually have no
musical training either and it takes
something as simple as a beats me and
creativity with your voice and that’s
what I Jenn who’s another High School
student does here snowpiercer sure it’s
cut my skin but we’re trudging forward
marching on surviving go where so I just
used a free online program that’s
accessible to anyone and wrote this for
as well with a veteran and I think he
has a really important message which is
life unclasped and that at the key is at
the heart of what we’re doing is they’re
trying to unclasp beyond the divides
that separate us and when we realize
that we can all be storytellers and
songwriters because at the core what
this is about is interpersonal and
relation and relationship we can come
together because it goes back to that
question how do I get to know you better
so I have this wise mentor of mine and I
went to him once thinking that saying I
figured it out I know what it is that I
want to do and I started saying what I
want to do is I know that my heart is in
music and he said immediately no it’s
not that your heart is in music but that
music is in your heart and I realized
that it wasn’t just music it was those
people as the sisters in the piano bench
it was the patients and my classmates
and the children the veterans these are
all parts of our hearts and in our
hearts we have spaces for a lot of these
areas
and I heard sorry stronger when they
come together and intersect so it
doesn’t have to be one or the other and
it doesn’t have to be one identity or
the other healing across divides is one
of the biggest challenges facing us
today not just in medicine but in
politics in religions in ideologies and
if we cut each other off
how does cut ourselves off we do a
but music heals at its core is a very
natural form of relating and
communication so let us join in let us
celebrate our stories each one of which
deserves to be heard together thank you [Applause]
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