Musicians have long known intuitively that experiencing the rhythms, harmonies and melodies of music -as listener or performer- can help mend the troubled mind, body and soul. And health professionals have long shared an intuitive understanding that this healing quality of music has a lot to offer medical science; witness the calming heart-rate monitors in a Savannah neo-natal ward as the regular visits of a harpist get underway. Now these enduring intuitions are converging to form the basis of an innovative program integrating the arts in health care at the new Chandler Medical Center at the University of Kentucky.
The $450 million patient care facility due for completion in 2010 will feature a specially designed auditorium adjacent to the building's main lobby. That may not seem unusual. Teaching hospitals do, after all, need space to conduct grand rounds, classes, facility and guest lectures. What makes this auditorium extraordinary is its intended uses beyond the routine. The 300-seat theater is to be equipped with state-of-the-art acoustics and audio/visual technology so that musical, dramatic and other live performance events, open to the public, can be piped directly into patients' rooms - as well as to those in other hospitals around the region.
Medical researchers are beginning to recognize that incorporating music, visual art, writing and performance into clinical care can influence and increase feelings of well-being and even improve health.
As of 2006 the Society for the Arts in Healthcare estimated that more than half of 2,500 U.S. hospitals surveyed were offering arts-based programs. But when asked, the Society could not find any among them with a facility or programming that compares with what is coming to UK.
"I'm not aware of another facility that can actually do live concerts and televise them as the performances are going on," said Dr. Michael Karpf, the university's dynamic executive vice president for Health Affairs. "I think that really brings this to a different level and I think it will give people a sense that they are still engaged in issues of happiness and being alive."
Karpf had planned to name the facility in honor of Pittsburgh philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife who pledged $5 million to fully fund the auditorium. But the chairman of the Sarah Scaife Foundation and owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review turned the tables. " Yes, Dick is an old friend for many years," Karpf offered. "He is a very generous man who is very much interested in humanistic issues and he visited me probably 6 or 8 months ago in Lexington to see how I was doing and I showed him the project and he said, 'you know if you have a really good idea I might want to help you out with it.' And then when we came up with this idea of developing a facility that would be state-of-the-art for education, but also could be used to humanize the program, I went up to Pittsburgh and met with Dick and I said, 'Gee, Dick this would be a fabulous piece for you to help us out with and a Scaife Auditorium would be great.' And Dick said, 'hey now I don't want it to be named the Scaife Auditorium, but I do want it to be named after you ultimately when it's appropriate.'"
UK Healthcare and the university's School of Music have formed a partnership to implement programming for what will be known as Karpf Auditorium and are working to translate the namesake's vision into reality. "We're hammering out the agreements between the medical center and the school of music," said UK Opera Director Everett McCorvey, noting that the hospital is taking the unusual step of adding a curator to its staff. "This person is more than just a curator for art. This person will be in charge of all of the creative activities related to art and music in the hospital - securing art for different areas in the hospital, planning the exhibits of art and along with that, this person will assist in planning music events that will go on not only in the auditorium but throughout the hospital."
Looking beyond enabling patients and staff to experience live music, the medical center hopes the programming will also serve research in the field of art and health care, regarded by many medical academics as anecdote-rich and evidence-poor. "It's kind of a hot item right now where quality music can be brought in to do many things for the patients and to enrich their lives, enliven their spirits. It helps with depression and anxiety, all sorts of things, so we see this as a natural fit," said School of Music director Ben Arnold. "I could see this as a study of seeing what do patients get the most satisfaction out of; it may be that they would get more comfort, or more enjoyment or more stress-release from listening to a certain kind music."
Studies are showing that music is helpful to patients by encouraging relaxation and reducing blood pressure, heart rate, stress hormones, pain and the need for pain medication. Still, the physiology of all this remains unclear. To some, a cause for doubt. To others, an open door to exploration and discovery.
Karpf noted that he is working with a donor to help perpetuate the program with an endowment. "I would ultimately like to raise $2 to $3 million at a minimum that would reside in the School of Music to support this program as well as to provide resources to make it an academic program to really investigate the characteristics of music and medicine and figure out how to enhance it."
The School of Music will supply much of the talent from among more than 40 ensembles covering music genres ranging from classical to jazz. "Don't forget Bluegrass!" added Karpf, a native of Pennsylvania who arrived in Kentucky from UCLA Medical Center. "I've come to really enjoy it in my five years in Kentucky. It's a very uplifting genre of music. We want things to relate to a broad array of patients," he said.
Live music is already enhancing the work environment in one key area of the medical center, Karpf noted, relating what happens in the operating room area when Dr. Jay Zwischenberger pulls a harmonica from his lab-coat pocket. "When he walks through the O.R. sometimes, and he's thinking, he'll play his harmonica. And it has a calming effect on the entire O.R. They know the Chair of Surgery is down there thinking about the O.R. and he's engaged. And so they look forward to hearing him play his harmonica as he walks through the O.R. So that's one other testament to the fact that music has a calming and healing component to it."
Zwischenberger, a bluesman reincarnated as a surgeon, has found two properties of music that support him in his work. "To me, music is both a universal language to allow immediate connection with patients and colleagues, and a discipline that opens new pathways in your mind. Musical improvisation is very similar to scholarly activity. One uses known building blocks to create new ways of approaching a problem."
By using the known building blocks of a performance space and live music, McCorvey noted, Dr. Karpf is creating a new way to approach the problems of stress and anxiety experienced by people encountering health issues in a hospital setting. "He's making it available to people when they are in difficult times in their lives, transitions in their lives, deeply emotional times in their lives. To have this resource available to them to sort of transport them to another place, to give them a sense of assurance, give them a sense of calm and peace in so many ways is a wonderful thing."
"This is a major component of what we are trying to do," said Karpf, "to address making the new hospital, which will be technologically very advanced, a very humane and humanizing place that contributes to the community in a broad-based way."