TITLE:
The Sound of Music: Transforming Medical Students into Reflective Practitioners
AUTHORS:
Marco Aurelio Janaudis, Michelle Fleming, Pablo González Blasco
KEYWORDS:
Medical Student; Music; Humanism; Qualitative Research
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.4 No.6A,
June
14,
2013
ABSTRACT: 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.