“But in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me.”
Those familiar lyrics, accompanied by gentle acoustic guitar music, spilled into the hallway on a recent morning at Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla.
The performer, registered nurse Rod Salaysay, whistled the final refrain, causing patient Ruth Dennison’s feet to dance under the covers of her hospital bedding.
“It’s like the sunshine, right?” Dennison said, sighing after the last note faded.
“She forgot she was in the hospital,” Salaysay half-joked. “You’re here. I just want to reorient you; you’re still in the hospital.”
The Pacific Beach resident, in an overnight recovery room after surgery, agreed.
“The room just got filled, it really got filled,” she said.
Nurse Rod Salaysay with his Ukulele, holds patient Ruth Dennison’s hand after playing her a song at UCSD Jacobs Medical Center. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
It is the effect that Salaysay has been working to perfect since roughly 2008 when, two decades into his career, he started singing to his patients. He has strummed his way through the past 18 years of 12-hour nursing shifts, first in the surgical intensive care unit at Scripps Memorial Hospital, then beside his wife, Myrna, as empty-nest travel nurses. Eventually, he landed at Jacobs, a UC San Diego Health hospital, six years ago.
Widely known and celebrated for his ability to blend music and medicine, Salaysay said last week his hospital room performances will soon draw to a close.
At age 65, he plans to follow Myrna into retirement at the end of the year.
Still trim in his blue scrubs, and with plans to build a second home on a plot the couple purchased in their native Philippines, it just seemed like the right moment, he said.
There is no official tally of patients serenaded, nor of the original songs made to fit individual circumstances.
Nurse Rod Salaysay walks to patient rooms to play his Ukulele at UCSD Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
But asked to look back across all of those songs, played in so many rooms over so many shifts, Salaysay says his mind immediately settles on Ashley Benedict, the 21-year-old surfer and lifeguard he cared for in 2009. Struck by a car, she spent 27 days in a coma.
He found himself not just singing to his patient, but also to her family members, trying as best he could to help them through their grief.
“We just celebrated her birthday again in Solana Beach a month ago,” Salaysay said, adding that he has returned for birthdays year after year since his patient went home.
Reached Thursday, Benedict says she credits Salaysay with saving her life with his music, though she does not remember it reaching her when she was unconscious 16 years ago. But she did learn, after waking up, that her nurse sang her a specific song. It’s one that she has made sure she has gotten to hear for herself.
“It’s called ‘You Can Make it Back,’ ” she said. “He wrote it, and he sings it at my birthday party.”
The effect of that song, stressed Benedict’s mother, Lori, was a lifeline when she spent every moment she could at her daughter’s bedside, living with the weight of a diagnosis that gave her daughter a 5% chance of survival.
“He was there for our whole family,” Lori said. “He saved all of us.”
Ashley Benedict, who still needs regular occupational therapy due to her injuries, said she keeps in touch with most of the nurses and staff who cared for her. She knows that it took a whole team of people to overcome the odds she faced. That said, she’ll always be able to hear the song he wrote for her.
“It’s been in my heart forever since I woke up,” she said.
Music, it seems, makes connections beyond hospital walls.
Another patient who suffered a two-story fall gifted Salaysay a ukulele before going home after a long stay. A few years later, the former patient reached out, now in good enough shape to work as a lobster fisherman.
“He called and said, ‘how’s the ukulele playing, because I met a woman, and I want to marry her,” Salaysay said. “Can you play at my wedding?”
Nurse Rod Salaysay holds his Ukulele, which was signed by various patients over the years, at UCSD Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. Salaysay has been singing to his patients for over Two decades and plans to retire later this year. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
His approach to bedside harmonics has proven irresistible to the media. A San Diego Union-Tribune feature in 2010 spurred a flurry of television coverage, one piece airing on CNN. The Associated Press revisited the story in 2025 with a focus on the healing benefits associated with music. A spontaneous rendition of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” played to a patient being discharged from his unit at Jacobs garnered more than 16,000 likes on TikTok just this month.
But most of the time he spent singing to patients over nearly two decades has been for the small audiences of patients and their family members. He stresses this isn’t a one-way exchange.
“There is the reciprocity of being able to share your music,” he said. “My body produces endorphins that make me feel good after I play.
“They last for a few hours, and I forget all my back pain, I forget my shoulder pain.”
And, he adds, this experience has changed him. It has engendered a sort of emotional triage in his mind, helping him to see, glancing into rooms, which patients could do with a visit from a singing nurse.
The music, he has learned, is the perfect excuse to linger a little after the last note ends, giving a chance, if the patient wants it, to talk about whatever may be on their mind.
“I don’t need to play all of the time, you know?” he said. “We can just sit there because they need somebody to talk to, they need somebody to relate to.”
Along the way, he has developed a strong Christian faith, which has in turn helped him see what he does as a sort of ministry.
“Over time, you develop yourself into something, a new version of you,” Salaysay said.
While patients will surely miss the music and the personal touch, he said he intends to return as a volunteer. And it is clear that his example has already taken root in others with medical and musical talent.
Nurse Rod Salaysay plays the Ukulele with colleague Nurse Justin Weiner at UCSD Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Fellow nurse Justin Weiner began doing duets with Salaysay when he arrived a few years back from New Jersey. He had seen some of the media coverage of San Diego’s singing nurse and was excited to get the chance to learn about playing for patients. His father, he said, had taught him to play guitar as a child, and he had briefly considered a career in music therapy.
Headed back East with his wife about the time that his musical mentor plans to retire, Weiner said he definitely hopes to continue sound practice at his next nursing job.
Salaysay, he said, is a template to follow.
“He’s magnetic,” Weiner said. “He’s just so positive and sweet and open to share.
“He’s comfortable singing for anybody.”