Takeaway
When visiting with patients, consider that music may be therapeutic. Listening with patients to their favorite music can reduce stress.
Connecting with patients | April 30, 2026 | 3 min read
By Nettie Reynolds, MDiv, interfaith chaplain
I was called for presence, which in an interfaith chaplain role, means sitting with the patient, listening actively, and offering comfort. The patient was in her early fifties, a middle school English teacher, and had recently had a stroke—she’d likely spent years shaping a room with her voice, choosing words carefully, knowing when to speak, and when to let silence do its work.
The stroke had taken most of that from her. Words were now hard to find and form—she conveyed frustration and it sometimes appeared as agitation or resistance to care. She moaned loud and long, the kind of sound that fills a hallway and wears on everyone, including the person making it.
The nurse who paged me was having a hard shift. The moaning had been going on for quite some time and she thought if I sat with the patient, just be present for a while, it might help her settle, or at least give the patient a different kind of attention than the task-driven care the shift required.
This nurse also knew that sometimes I brought music into a patient’s room. She mentioned that the patient’s daughter had said her mom always had music playing at home. Nina Simone. Marvin Gaye. John Coltrane.
Music as accompaniment
When I entered the room, the moaning was steady, low, and continuous, filling the space in a way that made it hard to think about anything else. I sat down beside her and held her hand for a moment, then pulled up Nina Simone on my phone and let it play softly. Nina has always been one of my favorites, which made it feel familiar to me too.
I started talking gently to the patient and rubbed her hand. She turned her head to me and said loudly, “Shush, shush.”
It made me smile, because she was shushing me so she could hear Nina instead. The song was “My Baby Just Cares For Me.”
Baby, my baby don’t care for shows
And he don’t even care for clothes
He cares for me
My baby don’t care
For cars and races
My baby don’t care for
He don’t care for high-tone places
I kept holding her hand while we both listened to Nina. Her shoulders relaxed. Her grip loosened. Her eyes softened and after a while she fell asleep. After the visit, I mentioned it to the nurse. The nurse shared the story with the patient’s daughter, and the daughter asked if she could bring in a CD player and a Nina Simone CD. Nina played on a loop. Nurses commented on how they slowed down to listen to the music too.
Music in dementia care
It’s striking how much comfort music can offer. In dementia care, often patients who can’t follow a conversation are able to hum along to a melody or sing every word of a song from decades earlier. The patient’s memory for language may fade, but the memory for music often holds.
Recent studies on music therapy in dementia care continue to show reductions in distress and agitation, even in patients with significant communication loss. In some cases, music therapy has been shown to improve cognitive engagement by activating alternative neural pathways when typical language processing is impaired. There are also ongoing trials exploring how structured music interventions can improve mood and reduce behavioral symptoms in clinical settings, not as a replacement for care, but as a way of reaching patients who cannot be reached in other ways.
In conclusion
The stroke patient didn’t recover. But it was a moment when something new worked, and a dedicated nurse who noticed made sure it kept working.
Here are three things to keep in mind when caring for patients:
1. Music can sometimes reach patients when language can’t.
Music offers a way in when words are limited or gone, sometimes allowing patients to respond and and relax.
2. Listen to music with patients.
Simply sitting and listening to music with a patient can improve their experience of care.
3. Quiet acts of care shape the entire environment.
A simple song on repeat changed the tenor of the room. Embracing music can help reduce the noisiness of the world at large.
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.