No one likes being in a hospital.
First of all, you’re probably not there because you are perfectly healthy.
It’s also unnerving being wheeled around in a hospital gown through hallways in front of strangers.
That’s why Lindon Beckford goes above and beyond the call of duty while on the job just to make sure his patients are at ease.
And he’s been doing it for more than 30 years, according to STAT.
Beckford is a transport worker and spends his days wheeling patients through the halls of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Like most transporters, introduces himself to patients and maybe even cracks a joke.
“Hi, I’m Lindon. I’m going to be your chauffeur,” he tells 58-year-old Barbara Tipton. “If you want to stop on the way for a piña colada, you let me know.
But unlike most transporters, Beckford sings his patients songs.
Beckford said he started out by singing to himself to help with his own anxiety and panic attacks.
“I grew up singing as a child it was more of a comfortable thing. I was always around music and I did that just to comfort myself but all of a sudden I realized that people were listening,” he says.
Not only was it patients who were listening but the hospital’s staff too.
They asked him to sing on an employee orientation video and sometimes ask him to sing to patients who are about to die.
Now Beckford will even take song requests from his patients. But he always asks first, not everyone wants to be sung to. He mostly sings gospel, love songs, country songs or reggae song he makes up.
Beckford, who lives with his wife and two children in Roslindale, has been singing since he was a little boy in Jamaica.
He used to sing at nightclubs in Massachusetts and Maine but stopped because of his panic attacks. Beckford’s patients say that his voice heals.
“You make me feel healthy again,” Tipson told him.
Studies show that music has health benefits including reducing stress, increasing joy, and boosting immunity. The hospital staff sees him as an integral part of their team.
“He’s not just a man that transports us,” she said. “He makes us happy. He makes our day bright,” says 63-year-old patient Vera Vicentini.
Learn more about Beckford in the video below.
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