HEALTH

Teacher scores singing songs of sickness

Medical students at the University of Pennsylvania can break into song about the darnedest subjects -- tuberculosis, for example.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. July 2, 2001.

Washington -- Helen Davies, PhD, admits she has ruined a lot of good music for the medical students she teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. But the students don't seem to mind.

Dr. Davies, academic coordinator of the Microbiology Dept. at Penn's School of Medicine, has come up with a novel way to teach her first- and fourth-year medical students the mind-boggling names of the many infectious diseases that may afflict their future patients.

She uses music.

Picture Dr. Davis leading her class in a poignant version of "Leprosy," sung to the tune of the Beatles' "Yesterday":

Leprosy,
How about "Herpes Simplex 1 and 2" sung to the Simon and Garfunkel tune, "Sounds of Silence":
Hello herpes our old friend.
She and her students have also fashioned songs about gonococci, the microorganisms that cause gonorrhea; congenital infections; and tuberculosis, to name a few.
"Over the years I've had people tell me that what they remember is primarily the information that comes together with music," she says.
"It's what used to be called right brain/left brain work," Dr. Davies says. The right brain is used to remember, by way of music and rhyme, the things the left brain needs to put together, she explains. [...]

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Copyright 2001 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.