You can hear the students Feb. 17 in the Health Science Center auditorium, when the choir will sing as part of a talent show fund-raiser for the Alpha Home.
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The strains of Frosty the Snowman and Joy to the World proceeded not from angels this day, but from 11 first- and second-year medical students in the Health Science Center’s Medical School. Visiting University Hospital, one of the teaching hospitals where they will do rotations in their third year, they made their merry way through the Janey Briscoe Children’s Center and down to the emergency room waiting area. With Santa hats perched on their heads and with sheet music in their hands, the students enjoyed a Friday afternoon free of books and, for the moment, the all-consuming memorization of medical anatomy and function.

Annie Chan organized the choir. Singing to patients was one reason, a few years ago, that she decided to enter medicine. “It’s the human touch and the impact it can have on patients,” she said. Chan fits in well at the Health Science Center’s Medical School, which places a premium on the human touch and on producing well-rounded students who see patients not as patients alone but as human beings with feelings and needs.

Student Catherine Pollock went to a child in the Briscoe Center playroom and gave her a little bell to ring while the choir sang. It was the human touch from a future physician.

The holiday tunes had everyone smiling.

The group laughed through musical starts and stops, such as forgetting a second verse of a carol. “This is why we have a day job doctoring,” joked Brent Lacey, a student from Coppell in the Dallas area. When asked if they would sing on their third-year rotations, some said, “We’re not sure how the attending [physician] will feel about that.” Lacey said the group intended to end with “Ode to a Gallstone.”

One of the funniest moments occurred when the singers said to onlookers in the ER waiting area, “It’s scary to know we will one day be your doctors.” A man in the front row chuckled as he replied, “You got that right.” It couldn’t have been further from the truth, for it was comforting to know that students who would take the time to sing to hospitalized children and to families waiting in an ER will one day be our physicians.

You can hear the students for yourself Feb. 17 in the Health Science Center auditorium, when the choir will sing as part of a talent show fund-raiser for the Alpha Home, a program that reaches women recovering from addictions, and the San Antonio Metropolitan Ministry Transitional Living and Learning Center. Tickets will be $12 once they go on sale. As sale information becomes available, it will be posted in HSC News.

The choir members touring the hospital were Hayden Stagg, Andrea Harris, Patrick Zimmerman, Catherine Pollock, Deborah Hendryx, Vivian Shih, Catherine Meshew, Stephen Chao, Stefanie Teng, Brent Lacey and Annie Chan.