Dignity Health | Be well | Spring 2018

If music has ever soothed you when you’re anxious or griev- ing, you know its healing power. Now a local volunteer singing group is putting that power to use at Mercy Medical Center Mt. Shasta (MMCMS). For roughly a year now, the dozen or so singers have shared their talent and compassion with patients and families who want the comfort of a favorite and familiar hymn during a hospital stay. They sing at the hospital at least once a month around patients’ bedsides. And they harmonize beautifully. So if you hear the sweet sounds of “Amazing Grace” or “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” coming from a hospi- tal room, you’re not imagining it. They also sing for patients be- ing cared for at home by our Mercy Hospice Mt. Shasta team. “Music has a way of healing people’s spirits, even those who are dying,” says MMCMS Chaplain Rosana Slezeviciute. She helps arrange the group’s visits—and often sings too. And indeed, studies suggest that lis- tening to music may not only ease levels of the stress hormone cortisol but also help curb pain. Tuned in to a need Though the members now come from varied faiths, they started as a church group that sang for residents at Mt. Shasta’s only nursing home. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the rich baritone of Todd Guthrie, MD, an MMCMS orthopaedic surgeon, and the lovely alto of his wife, Patti. It was Patti Guthrie who felt that our patients might also be com- forted by live music. And with the help of her husband and the nursing staff, the group made its first visit to the hospital last February. By luck, Slezeviciute was at the hos- pital that day and heard the singing. She knew what a need it filled. The hospital and hospice patients she ministers to had often expressed a MUSIC is powerful medicine 18