In today’s healthcare settings, technology promises connection-yet so often, it delivers the opposite. I’ve heard many patients share a common frustration: “My doctor hardly looked at me.” Instead, their eyes are fixed on the screen, navigating electronic records while the human story slips into the background. Medicine, once defined by the presence of the physician at the bedside, is increasingly mediated through clicks, templates, and timestamps.

That’s why Scales to Scalpels felt so refreshing-and necessary. In this beautifully woven narrative, Dr. Lisa Wong, a pediatrician and lifelong musician, invites us into a world where healing begins with listening- not just to words, but to silence, to emotion, to music, to what isn’t said. Through the story of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra and her own journey through medicine and music, Dr. Wong makes a quiet but powerful case: attention is care.

The book doesn’t argue for art as a mere “complement” to medicine; it reveals how the habits of musicianship-practice, improvisation, attunement-are the very same habits that make for extraordinary clinicians. She shows us how shared creativity can build community, deepen empathy, and even transform systems.

But what struck me most was how Scales to Scalpels gently reminds us that presence and attention are not optional in medicine-they are what make medicine medicine. In an age of algorithms and acceleration, this book slows us down just enough to remember why we do this work in the first place.

Dr. Wong’s vision isn’t nostalgic-it’s aspirational. She doesn’t mourn the loss of connection in modern medicine; she models how we might restore it, one note, one patient, one moment at a time.