Step Outside the Music Box

At my internship I've learned a good amount of music I'm not used too. It's been refreshing and introduces me to new styles that I now enjoy. I've never been a fan of hip hop but since it's a favorite genre of the patients here I've had to step outside my comfort zone and learn how to rap. Let me tell you... I'm not too bad! I actually enjoy rapping now. I get really into it and enjoy learning them. A tip about recreating hip hop is to use the Q-chord, not only does it give you a drum beat but it makes it easier to rap.

In my classes at FSU I never learned much hip hop. If your still a student, learn all of the different styles of music you can! Diversify your repertoire, especially if you're interested in working with adolescents. The two genres most requested at the hospital I intern at is country and hip hop.

Another challenge with working in a Children's hospital is having to constantly update yourself with what is popular on the radio. I frequently look at billboards.com top 100 to stay updated and better predict what patients will request. I can keep track of the top hits from day to day but we also have tons of outliers! I was super excited to learn a Blink 182 (one of my favorite bands) song a few weeks ago even though they haven't been on the radio in quite some time. If a song is older than a year it typically is not requested that much. Walking into a room is always an interesting experience because I never know what I'm going to get!
  

Staying Updated with MT

I wanted to pass on two resources that keep me updated with Music Therapy!

1. MusicTherapyEnews- I came across this because I was previously in an organization that used yahoo groups as a form of communication. You will need to have/make a yahoo account to add this, click on yahoo groups, and then search "MusicTherapyEnews" and it should pop up. Click subscribe, and you will get updates on MT. This resource is published by AMTA, and I have received updates about National conference that have been very useful. Another great thing about Yahoo is that you can forward the groups emails to your primary email. Just click on "edit membership" when you are a part of the group and click on what email you want them sent too.

2. Google Alerts- I want to give credit to Elisa Aven for showing me this. Google "Google alerts" and you can set up Google to email you any web results of Music Therapy. You can limit how often, and if the links are web, news, blog etc.

I hope this helps and if you have trouble accessing these just let me know!

Child Life

What is Child Life?

Child life specialists are trained professionals with expertise in helping children and their families overcome life’s most challenging events (the definition from the child life council website). I had no idea what a child life specialist was until this internship. During my practicum at the Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare I knew the child life specialist as the friendly lady that referred patients to music therapy, but they are much more than that.

I have had the opportunity to shadow most of the child life department. The child life department consists of six child life specialists, one school teacher, and one music therapist. A definition that clarified child life for me is that they have the same objectives as music therapy but the interventions are different. In future posts I will go into detail about interventions they use that can benefit music therapy. In particular, observing a child life specialist (CLS) during procedural support has been extremely helpful.

The child life major is heavy in psychology and child development. While music therapy is normalizing an environment with patient preferred music, child life (CL) does the same idea with patient preferred activities. During procedural support nurses turn to CL to assess if the patient needs sedation. CL act as support for the patients, one CLS stated that she feels like the middleman sometimes. CLS build rapport and trust with patients, and patients confide in them what they are scared to tell the physicians or nurses. During my meeting with the CL coordinator, she said that child life and music therapy are very complimentary. After observations, I can’t see how a children’s hospital functions without both of these fields.