Establishing a New Music Therapy Service in an Aged-Care Centre with Multiple Settings: The Journey of a Music Therapy Student

This exegesis describes my journey as a music therapy student navigating a practicum placement with older people, in a facility where there had been no previous music therapy service. My uncertainty about beginning the placement was compounded by the fact that major renovations were taking place at the facility, and low staff numbers meant I was left largely to my own devices. The fact that music therapy is a young profession was clearly going to have an impact on how I went about building my own practice as a music therapy student within the facility. This study was therefore motivated by my desire to explore my process of establishing a new service in a healthcare setting and to share the strategies I developed. Using secondary analysis of data as my research approach I have analysed my meeting notes and a self-refective journal to explore both the advantages and challenges of building a music therapy program as a student. Seven preliminary themes have emerged including ‘Developing relationships with staff and fnding support within the institution’; ‘Educating people about the role of music therapy’; and ‘Coming to terms with institutional constraints’. I needed to ‘Develop relationships with participants and family members’, ‘Develop various music therapy programmes for different settings’, and I learned about ‘Taking risks’ and ‘Engaging in self-refexive practice’. The study supports previous research about the challenges of implementing a new service in a facility, including the requirement for high levels of communication/language skills and the need to fulfl multiple roles. It also confrms research that shows that some of these communication skills go beyond the training undertaken by music therapists. This study suggests that this might be remedied through coursedevelopment within tertiary music therapy education programmes, and courses and conferences through professional music therapy organisations.