Joan Valls with her violin.
A young doctor, violin in hand, entertained a children’s operating room singing a song from the Disney movie ‘The Little Mermaid’. The image quickly went viral and made known the nice gesture of Joan Valls, a first-year resident of Pediatrics at the Hospital Sant Joan de Deu. As he himself has recognized, he has always liked to help, and he has achieved it by uniting his two passions: music and medicine.
“It all started at the charity gala that the hospital organizes every year. I played to raise funds and I thought that, instead of doing it once a year, could do it weekly rotating through different departments“, explained Valls to Medical Writing. In her performances, she accompanies the little ones in the operating room or while they are receiving chemotherapy
In addition to this resident’s initiative, his hospital has different accompaniment projects for families and children: “The idea is to highlight a little the human part, in addition to the medical. Try to help people who come to the hospital in other facets, since in children all these situations generate a lot of stress and anxiety”.
“Apart from medical treatment, there are more ways that we can help children to be as calm and motivated as possible to cope. That’s why I like to do my bit with something that has helped me a lot, such as music.“, Valls has defended.
Benefits of music for hospitalized children
Likewise, he has detailed that music has many benefits in sick people: “The relaxation that a live song can induce and the emotion you feel when listening to it. Another very important one is evasion, that the moment you are living be as light as possible.”
In the same way, he has remarked that these positive effects are even more effective in children, since they “do not know very well the seriousness of the situation” and transmit “distraction and joy” to them. The other great beneficiaries are the parents.who find in music a way to get their emotions out in a situation in which they force themselves to be especially strong, giving them the opportunity to openly cry.
That yes, the melodies that he interprets vary a little according to the age and the tastes of each patient: “The main soundtrack when they are little ones is Disney, because they are movies that they like a lot. And when they are older, more current songs by artists like Ed Sheeran, Aitana or Álvaro Solerwhich are more moving songs and brighten up the situation a bit”.
Very “grateful” of live music in the hospital
The young man has recognized that the response to his initiative has been, in general, very positive: “People have been very grateful, especially in the operating room, because the waiting time had become shorter and the children were more relaxed.
On a personal note, he is delighted with the “unity” he sees in families when he plays: “One day I performed the song ‘Escriurem’ by Miki Núñez. The chorus says ‘it’s not going to be easy’ (everything wasn’t easy) and a mother with her son, who had leukemia, sang the song while he played and you could see the light in their eyes: ‘You’re doing very well, it’s not been easy, but together we’re a team’. And all these moments then you take them home with a full heart.
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