Thanks for All You Do | Threshold Choir

Arranger: Sharon Barbee
Composer: Sharon Barbee
Lyricist: Sharon Barbee

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Submitter Comments

In June of 2017, our Threshold Choir singers were asked to sing on a regular basis at Kaiser Permanente’s hospital in Santa Rosa, CA. Each day that we were scheduled to sing, the chaplain wrote up a list of patients that might benefit from our singing. We were also told that, though there was considerable research showing how much hospital patients could benefit from singing, the chaplain felt that the hospital staff would also benefit from being sung to. We were, therefore, asked to sing to the staff as well as to the patients.

With that in mind, while driving to sing at the hospital one day, I asked myself what exactly we would want to say to the staff with our songs. The song, “Thanks For All You Do” was the result of that query. We sang it at nursing stations at the hospital and to caregivers we came across in our singing at homes and other facilities. I remember singing it once at a Kaiser staff appreciation lunch.

Raymond Dougherty, chaplain at the hospital, went on to do a study of the effect of our singing on the hospital staff, and published it in the International Journal for Human Caring, Volume 23, Number 3, 2019. The study found that the singing increased the nurses’ calmness, peacefulness, and sense of interpersonal connection. In nurturing the well-being of the nurses, there could be an additional improvement in patient care.

The song was translated into Hindi in 2020 when one of our choir members, Amma Thanasanti, asked for permission to sing it for the doctors and staff who had helped her so much at Saranya Ayurvedic Hospital (SAH) in India.

T2P:CC—OK to share your own recording for this purpose; also send to songwriter.

Lyrics

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the things you do.
May all the love you’ve offered come flowing back to you.
May the people that you tend to thrive within your care.
May you feel the blessings of all the times you shared.
All the love, all the blessings, all the love, all the blessings,
Thanks for what you do.