'Music makes everything better': A Texas doctor spins vinyl to give patients relief

'Music makes everything better': A Texas doctor spins vinyl to give patients relief Dr. Tyler Jorgensen sets "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on a record player at Dell Seton Medical Center in Austin Texas. He uses vinyl records as a form of music therapy for palliative care patients. Lorianne Willett/KUT News hide caption toggle caption AUSTIN, TEXAS - Lying in her bed at Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas at Austin, 64-year-old Pamela Mansfield sways her feet to the rhythm of George Jones' "She Thinks I Still Care." Mansfield is still recovering much of her mobility after a recent neck surgery, but she finds a way to move to the music floating from a record player that was wheeled into her room. "Seems to be the worst part is the stiffness in my ankles and the no feeling in the hands," she says. "But music makes everything better." The record player is courtesy of the ATX-VINyL program, a project dreamed up by Dr. Tyler Jorgensen to bring music to the bedside of patients dealing with difficult diagnoses and treatments. He collaborates with a team of volunteers who wheel the player on a cart to patients' rooms, along with a selection of records in their favorite genres. "I think of this record player as a time machine," he said. "You know, something starts spinning - an old, familiar song on a record player - and now you're back at home, you're out of the hospital, you're with your family, you're with your loved ones." Daniela Vargas, a volunteer for the ATX-VINyL program, wheels a record player to the hospital room of a palliative care patient in Austin, Texas. Lorianne Willett/KUT News hide caption toggle caption The healing power of Country music... and Thin Lizzy Mansfield wanted to hear country music: Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Jones. That genre reminds her of listening to records with her parents, who helped form her taste in music. Almost as soon as the first record spins, she starts cracking jokes. "I have great taste in music. Men, on the other hand ... ehhh. I think my picker's broken," she says. Other patients ask for jazz, R&B or holiday records. The man who gave Jorgensen the idea for ATX-VINyL loved classic rock. That was around three years ago, when Jorgensen, a long-time emergency medicine physician, began a fellowship in palliative care - a specialty aimed at improving quality of life for people with serious conditions, including terminal illnesses. Shortly after he began the fellowship, he says he struggled to connect with a particular patient. "I couldn't draw this man out, and I felt like he was really struggling and suffering," Jorgensen said. He had the idea to try playing the patient some music. He went with " The Boys Are Back in Town ," by the 1970s Irish rock group Thin Lizzy, and saw an immediate change in the patient. "He was telling me old stories about his life. He was getting more honest...

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