Abstract
Professional singers are exposed to high levels of vocal strain, which leads to a high prevalence of voice disorders within this occupational group. As part of appropriate phoniatric and musicians' medicine care, particular attention must be paid to the prevention of voice disorders as early as during the university training stage. In the healthcare sector, prevention has taken on growing importance since the introduction of the Prevention Act in 2015. It seems sensible to embed the teaching of preventive measures within the curriculum for singers' university training. Drawing on their dual qualifications as phoniatricians and singers and based on their many years' teaching experience at universities of music, the authors present a curriculum for the subject 'voice physiology and vocal health', which equips students with a scientific understanding of the physiological mechanisms of the voice and enables them to practice active prevention in the field of vocal health. The modularized curriculum content of the subject is designed to impart physiological and acoustic knowledge of vocal function and hearing, as well as the fundamentals of vocal health, vocal hygiene and the prevention of vocal disorders. The module should be established as a compulsory component of the bachelor's degree programme in vocal performance and comprise in total thirty 45-minute teaching units over the course of one or two semesters. In addition to its inclusion in the curriculum, there is a need for continuous professional learning in this area, both for the specialist medical professions primarily responsible for patient care (phoniatrics/paedaudiology, otorhinolaryngology, musicians' medicine) and for singers.