The medical muso

The medical muso

Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of how music can change the course of critical illness. This episode of **All In The Mind** centres on guitarist Andrew Schulman, who describes himself as a "medical musician" after a near-death experience in a New York surgical intensive care unit. You’ll hear how Andrew was given a 99% diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, survived major surgery, then went into anaphylactic shock and terminal acidosis.

With medicine seemingly failing, his wife Wendy had a sudden idea: "He loves music more than anything... I think only music could reach him." She placed his earbuds in and played the first track on his iPod – his favourite piece, Bach’s *St Matthew Passion*. Within about 30 minutes his vital signs began to stabilise, and staff later referred to the event as "the St Matthew Miracle".

Host Lynne Malcolm talks with Andrew about waking up, realising "the body remembers", and deciding he had to "give back" through music. He returns to the ICU as part of the medical team, partnering with Dr Marvin McMillan to shape medical musicianship as a new specialty focused on intensive care.

Andrew explains his method: checking vital signs, doing a gentle "promenade" through the unit, and then using what he calls "penicillin pieces"—especially Bach, Gershwin and The Beatles—to calm patients, ease delirium and lift people out of dysphoria. The story of the "Russian patient" in ICU delirium and "Mr G", an ageing jazz saxophonist, shows how carefully chosen music can soothe agitation, improve vital signs and spark imagined playing or singing in the mind.

Alongside these stories, you’ll hear how music acts through the "old brain", releasing chemicals like serotonin and dopamine that reduce pain, stress and fear. It’s a heartfelt look at how a favourite tune might one day be as routine as a blood test in hospital care. Could the songs you love be part of your own healing toolkit?