Footage Shows Transporter Taking Patients To Their Rooms — Gains Instant Internet Fame

Nov 07, 2020

Lindon Beckford has been working as a transporter at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts for over three decades. He's made a name for himself throughout his career for one unique reason: for singing to his patients as he transports them across the hospital. 

His kind gesture is one of great value, as his songs soothe patients in an otherwise distressing environment. In this video from 2016, that kindness is on display.

As a transporter, Beckford gets to know patients at the hospital differently than the doctors or nurses do. He says he gets to have a unique interaction with them, with patients often opening up about their lives.

"In patient transport, a lot of time we're just talking, have conversation about any little thing — gardening, pets, sports, anything in the news, or, you know, families," Beckford told WBUR back in April.

"In between, then if something come to me, I'll just start singing out. I'm singing anything that come to mind: reggae, gospel, country, love songs — whatever comes to mind at the moment, I'll sing."

Patients would often tell him how good it was to hear him sing, even how good it made them feel, so he started doing it for all the patients he would transport. 

In a video by STAT, Beckford says that he typically tells patients his name and lets them know that he will be their "chauffeur."

He smiles and takes this opportunity to help ease the fears of his patients with music. He uses music to bring a smile to the patients he is wheeling around. Some of them are just so touched they start to cry. Beckford knows that he doesn't come to work every day only to perform a job.

He wants to be there for the men and women dealing with surgeries and illnesses in any way that he can. 

Although his songs mean so much to his patients, Beckford says it truly just comes naturally to him. 

"I was always singing as a child," he told STAT. "It was just a natural thing."

Beckford, who is originally from Jamaica, finds his comfort for himself when he sings as well. According to STAT, he suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. Although he did once pursue a music career, performing live in nightclubs in Massachusetts and Maine in the '80s, he was forced to quit due to suffering panic attacks on stage. 

So in 1985, when he joined the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he started singing to comfort himself and piece together melodies from the past. 

"It was more of a comforting thing. I was always around music. I do that just to comfort myself but all of a sudden, I realized, people were listening to me," Beckford added.

Today, Beckford takes requests; many of the people he transports even sing along with him as they go! 

In the video below, he asks a patient what she would like him to sing for her, to which she replied, "I don't know. You can sing whatever you want because you have a beautiful voice."

Beckford says that his ultimate goal is to make sure each patient has a unique, or "unusual" as he calls it, experience. 

"Depending on the conversation that I hear, is the patient in pain, what song can I sing to relieve them?"

When he sings to the patients, they feel more at ease. They don't expect to hear what they do when they are in a place to get an operation or procedure done! They love having something that takes their mind off of what is about to happen. Getting cheered up by Beckford truly means so much to them.

"At the end, when I get them to the procedure or back to their room, they will tell me, 'you know, you make this trip from here to there so much easier because you're singing,'" Beckford said. 

And while Beckford might not be offering the patients drugs or healing them physically, he provides another kind of therapy, one for the soul. According to a 2013 joint study by Brandeis University in Massachusetts and Zürich University, music can have beneficial properties on individuals dealing with stress. 

"A doctor has his part to play, a nurse has her part … I've got my part to play," Beckford says.

You can watch Lindon in action in this fantastic video below:

What did you think of Lindon? Did he touch your heart like he did ours? Let us know by leaving a comment!