David Cohen cares for his patients with the medicine of music

Between the beeps of heart monitors and the squeak of wheelchairs across the floods, there’s a soothing sound occasionally filling area hospitals.

David Cohen is a professional musician who moved to the Quad Cities in January, landing a job at UnityPoint Health Trinity that focuses on improving patient experiences.

To do that, his instruments aren’t a scalpel and stethoscope. It requires a receptive ear. 

David has been playing music much of his life including performing some of the works from the great musicians and composers.

But what he plays now is all his own works because, in the songs, it’s not just about what you hear but what you feel. 

It’s showtime for David.

“I put new strings on and when the strings are new. They take, like it takes them a while stretch out,” said David. 

And where he takes his instruments is a place few people want to stay. 

On the fourth floor in room 38, that’s where David finds a captive audience in Millie and her family.

Patient Millie Meersman said, “What he did with his hands, it was… I could have sat and cried.”

For David, this universal language is medicine.

David said, “Universal healing.”

It’s because of the love of his life, Tanya, that hospitals and clinics have become David’s venue of choice.

David said, “I was living in the hospital with her, and it was right around Christmas time, and a men’s choirs came in to sing, and it was the most incredible thing.”
He went on to say, “I started playing in her room and the patients would applaud when I would finish.”

Through his wife’s cancer treatment, he saw the impact of healing.

“This was something that she always heard in the house, whether she wanted to at the time or not, but it gave her a sense of normalcy. It gave her a chance to relax, and many times it relaxed her enough so she could fall asleep,” he said. 

He explained, “She wasn’t able to sleep from the chemo, and all the other treatment she had and this gave her an opportunity to relax, and she would fall asleep.”

It’s been several years since her passing, but Tanya is with him in the songs he writes plays.

David said, “All of them are, they all are [inspired by her].”

So guitar, bagpipes, Chinese Pipa. 

Millie said, “His whole soul came out in that stream of music.”

He plays.

David said, “A piece always starts with a feeling I have to resolve it.”

With each song, it’s healing for him too.

David said, “It’s a form of survival.”

David said it was his wife’s time in the hospital that inspired him to go into the medical field, working as a Patient Experience Coordinator.

“After the experiences my wife had in the hospital I became a very vocal advocate for her and then I got to a point where I realized there’s a higher calling in my life than music and that became patient experience,” said David.

Music is just one-way David said UnityPoint Health helps to put patients at ease and help them until they can go home.

There are two days, in particular, David said he tries to perform at a hospital. That’s Christmas and Thanksgiving because they can be some of the loneliest.

For many years after his wife’s passing, he would return to the hospital that treated her in Philidelphia on those days as a way to thank them for their care.