New acquaintances often ask me if we listen to music in the operating room.
I am not sure where or how they hear that – do TV shows or movies portray this? You cannot believe everything you see on TV!
I generally hesitate to answer this seemingly simple question.
If I say “Yes”, what I really mean is “yes, but…”
During my fourth year of surgical residency, I was laparoscopically removing a kidney from a volunteer donor which would be carefully walked into the next room to be transplanted immediately into the recipient. This was a very precise and careful procedure, as the function of that kidney in its new home depended on delicate handling. I was standing on one side of the patient, the video screen a few feet in front of me on the other side of the patient. You could almost say I was immersed “in the abdomen”, so intent was my focus. I “woke to the room” when an attending urologist literally yelled my name multiple times. I looked over to see him standing in the open doorway, backlit from the hallway. I was then immediately aware of the music in our room blaring loudly – dance music. I looked behind me to see my Attending Surgeon “dancing” with the scrub nurse (staying sterile!), obviously not worried at all about my surgical skills. And I had been completely unaware of everything except what I was doing inside that abdomen up until that moment!
So while music could be a distraction to some, your operating room team (in contrast to the days of yore when I was in training) has their focus on you, the patient, and the task at hand, which is to keep you safe. In the real world, it is typically quiet and in the background.
Sound can be incredibly powerful both to disturb and to heal. Sound is vibration, and we are all affected by it on some level. Think of the drumming circle, the high school band, the opera or Broadway musical, music in the car, music in the shower…. Music has the power to make us feel a certain way, well beyond its vibration physically. On a day to day basis, we often use music to create a mood for ourselves and for others.
So we harness it for Good when we allow a patient to select the music of the hour when they are partly awake for a procedure. I even once had a patient ask the team to sing her a song as they wheeled down the hallway into the operating room. Thankfully she did not have perfect pitch, and we all sang for her in the spirit of Service, which meant the world to her. And it helped her to relax and to feel deeply cared for.
Yes, sometimes it is important to use music in the operating room.