A young junior doctor who worked tirelessly in the city’s hospitals during the pandemic has taken the stories of the patients she met and written songs about them.
And now Dr Holly Dejsupa has graduated from the University of Bristol, begun her full medical career and also released an album of the songs that were inspired by the patients and staff in the city.
Each of the tracks on Dr Holly Dejsupa’s debut album is about the powerful stories of patients she met along her journey as a young doctor in Bristol, and she wrote, recorded and produced the album - called Wednesday’s On-Call - around the shifts at the NHS hospitals here, and her studies at the University of Bristol’s Medical School.
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Each of the six tracks is about an individual patient, with all of them anonymised to protect their confidentiality. University bosses have hailed the album as a neat way of telling her medical journey in the form of music - even though, in a twist, one of the songs, called Release Me, about a patient presenting with severe fatigue and burnout, is about Holly herself.
Now 24, Holly has a job working as a junior doctor in Surrey, and has no plans to give up her career for a musical one.
“In medicine, I can touch the patient's abdomen, listen to their chest – but with music, I can reach people I can’t see,” she said. “I just hope each patient story inspires people as much as it did for me when writing them. I won’t stop making music. Ultimately, what inspires me has always been, and will always be, people – and that applies to being both a musician and a doctor. I wrote and recorded all the songs around hospital placements. At one point, it became even more stressful than medicine!” she added.
One of the songs, called Dawn, is about a young child with Angelman Syndrome, a genetic condition which meant she would only ever say three or four words. By omitting lyrics and titling the track with one of the few words she could say, Holly hopes that ‘somewhere in the world, wherever she is, she can sing along too’, she said.
Another track on the album is As Long As I Breathe, a powerful song about her ‘absurdly kind and selfless’ consultant who died fighting COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic, and Red Freckles, about an eloquent young woman who struggled with severe bulimia, despite being fully aware of her condition.
Sarah Purdy, the University of Bristol’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Student Experience and a part-time GP, said: “Practising medicine is an art as well as a science and being able to communicate with people is a core skill for medical students and doctors.
“Holly’s amazing talents in music and medicine take this to a next level. These beautiful tracks really touched me as I listened - I found them haunting and thought provoking. Thank you, Holly, for sharing them with us,” she added.
- Find out more about Holly, watch her videos and listen to her music here
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