In response to increasing physician burnout and deteriorating patient relationships, medical educators are increasingly adopting humanities approaches to better equip future physicians to cope with healthcare challenges. However, music has not been widely considered as a tool to reach this end. This work reviews the literature to explore how music can be used to nurture various skills related to empathy, which include listening to a patient narrative, engaging with the illness experience, and dealing with ambiguity. This study reviews the physiological evidence of connections between music and empathy and reviews evidence that suggests that listening to and performing music can train doctors to listen better, deal with the complexity of illness, and prioritize patient needs. The understanding brought by this exploration can be used to develop curricula that teach medical students about the importance of humanism in patient care. This could lead to better clinical outcomes, lower student distress levels, and increased patient satisfaction.Musi
