A patient was treated to a “spine tingling” performance of Schubert’s Ave Maria, when a cellist turned medical registrar fulfilled her dying wish to hear live classical music one last time. 

That doctor was Dr Michael Lam, who used to play to large concert halls before switching to medicine halls.

This time, he gave a bedside recital to an audience of one, plus a handful of doctors and nurses in the wings, at Mackay Base Hospital in Queensland as part of the patient’s end-of- life planning. 

“She was really pleased and shared with me her love of classical music. She told me it reminded her of her childhood,” Dr Lam said in a statement.