The Academy aims to prepare students for a lifelong professional career, for which long-term health is crucial. The Academy works with a broad range of medical specialists who deal with difficulties related particularly to performing musicians. Close links exist with a number of London’s excellent teaching hospitals.

Paddington Green Clinic
Paddington Green is a general practice that provides treatment and advice for most ailments, injuries (including performance-related injuries) and ill health. It also offers help and advice relating to chronic illness and disabilities and has a Counsellor.

Students approaching the service will be offered an appointment with a practitioner who will assess the student and arrange a referral if necessary. Please phone to make an appointment. All information given by patients is confidential and not divulged without their prior consent.

Paddington Green Health Centre will accept any Royal Academy of Music student on a temporary registration or in an emergency.

Paddington Green Health Practice, 4 Princess Louise Close, London W2 1LQ
Telephone 020 7887 1600 or 020 7887 1601.
Please telephone between 8.30am and 12.30 pm or 2.30pm and 6.30pm to make an appointment.

You can apply for an HC2 certificate which will allow you to get help with NHS prescription charges, sight tests and dental care. The application form is called the HC1 and you can get this from a Jobcentre Plus Office or NHS hospital. Your doctor, dentist or optician may have one too. You can also request a form by telephoning 0845 850 1166 or by visiting here.

Registering with a Doctor (also known as a General Practitioner or GP)
You should register with a doctor close to where you live (usually within two miles). A list of local doctors will be available from the local post office or chemist (pharmacy), or the local health authority, or the NHS website. To register you will need to visit the doctor's receptionist during consulting hours, taking your ID card from the Academy as proof that you are a student.

First Aid
The Academy has named and trained first-aiders on the premises.

Pastoral team
A fully-integrated pastoral team is led by the Counsellor. The Academy also has a Chaplain.

Additional needs
The Academy’s Disability Advisor provides a confidential service on matters relating to dyslexia, mental health and other special needs.

Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique has been taught at the Royal Academy of Music for over 25 years.

Every student at the Academy has the opportunity to have individual lessons in the Alexander Technique for one year. Although FM Alexander was not a musician, it is musicians, possibly more than any other profession who have recognised its benefits. The Technique is taught in all the major conservatories of music in the UK, as well as in specialist secondary music schools.

Many performers believe the Alexander Technique to be an indispensable foundation for such a demanding and competitive profession. The Technique helps us to allow the release of unnecessary tensions, the changing of habits acquired through years of physical misuse, and the prevention of interference with delicate mechanisms of balance.

The Alexander Technique teachers at the Royal Academy of Music have all trained on a Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) approved course. More information about the Technique, and about the benefit of the Technique for musicians, can be obtained from STAT.

Mental Training for Musicians
Psychology-based music performance classes with Inger Murray are offered where possible to help all students to achieve their potential by managing performance nerves. Feedback has demonstrated that these classes are of great benefit to many students.

The aim of the workshops is to teach students techniques to overcome performance anxiety, be able to realize their full potential on the concert platform, and cope with the pressures involved in a career as a performing musician. Students are also shown how to remove a mental block, together with the stress, anxiety and accumulation of adrenalin from past traumatic performance experiences. The workshops are spread evenly over the academic year.

Inger Murray is a graduate in psychology (Copenhagen). She has developed a special concept for musicians after having studied for many years the problems performing musicians face in their work. This research has also included studying the pressures students face during conservatory education and in examination and competition situations.

Inger Murray coaches top professional musicians and holds workshops in many countries. She holds workshops for the Danish Musicians Union, and the Royal Danish Academy of Music refer students to her who suffer from examination nerves and performance anxiety. She is also Director of the Centre for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Copenhagen.