ATLANTA — No one wants to go to the hospital. Patients are often hurt or sick -- looking to hold on to something.
Jason Childs, a nurse at Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital, is giving patients that thing to hold on to -- a sense of comfort through music.
Childs, 35, said he never expected to perform in a hospital room, but when one of the patients he was caring for got scared and wouldn't let him take her vitals, he started singing to calm her down. It worked.
"Music is the thing that always connects people," Childs said.
Childs is a signed recording artist who is working his way through nursing school.
"When I started singing, she just stopped resisting and grabbed my face," he said, about the first time he sang to a patient.
"Music, you just turn your mind off; you just relax and jump in. With nursing, you have to critically think about everything," he said.
Childs said music comes naturally to him. Unlike music, he had to learn to become a good nurse.
"The stressful environment of the hospital, you really have to be able to prioritize. Not get emotionally reactive to things," he said.
That part was hard for Childs. As a musician, he's always connecting with people, and he didn't want to give that up when he started his career as a nurse.
"Even on the days he wasn't taking care of me, he would pop in to say 'HEY!' He made me feel seen as a person, not just a patient," Sydney Perry said.
Perry, 18, met Childs when she was rushed to the hospital after a car accident.
"I had five fractures in my pelvis, and a broken tailbone and a concussion," she said.
Her recovery was difficult.
"It was really depressing. I couldn't get out of bed. I didn't know what the outside looked like," she said.
That's where Childs came in. He found out Perry liked country music and sang her some songs from George Strait. Perry spent part of her recovery in the hospital watching his YouTube channel.
"I hope whatever his passion is, he gets to do it fully," she said.
Childs said his passion, for now, is music, but nursing pays the bills. To him, it matters that he can do both.
"Just that you made a difference for someone's stay at a hospital, and it will never be charted or anything like that," he said.
I asked Childs if he knows which song he's going to sing to which patient. He said no, he has to get to know them first to see what music they love. Then they can connect over that.