Even if you are the only music therapist at your facility, no one is an island: unfortunately, it is easy to feel deserted! Catching yourself feeling like “no one ever even reads my reports” or “nobody gets what I do!”?
We’ve all been there. In the video below, Brittany Tachkov, MT-BC explains how to it doesn’t take an army of music therapists to get the job done– just one resourceful, connected, and supported one! Whether it’s a related staff member who can help you find the data you need, a colleague who supports your work, or the friend who keeps you accountable and driven toward your goals, surrounding yourself with people who help you feel empowered will get you off the desert island and excited to dive deeper into your dream career.
Read the Are You Alone As A Music Therapist? Transcript
Kat Fulton, MM, MT-BC: So many of us work as silos. We are the only music therapists at our facility. We work alone. We never see another music therapist in our day. If we do work with music therapists, we’re lucky if we see them once a month or whatever it is, so it’s tough to stay self-disciplined in collecting data and generating reports. How do you do it? Is there anything you have to add?
Brittany Tachkov, MT-BC: We have to question, or I have to question, am I truly alone? Am I truly alone in putting these numbers and reports together? Am I truly the only one that is collecting this data? Sometimes the answer is, yes. There are occasions where I’m the only one that has certain information. I’m the only one who can put the finishing touches on a report. I’m the only one who might collect the data of how many visits I made.
Brittany: Sometimes there are other people who can actually help us with some of those little bits and pieces, whether it’s our music therapy network, whether it’s a department, wherever we’re working or contracting with that might actually already have that data on hand, or it might just be that we need to surround ourselves with cheerleaders. That could be a family member, that could be a friend, that could be a music therapy peer, someone that you can even just text. You don’t necessarily have to be right there in person, but just to text and say, “I need one more push to get this done. What advice do you have for me right now?” That has helped me push through some of those challenging moments where I do get stuck. I do need to push a little bit further through that.
Brittany: The other piece that helps is when it’s normalized, when it just becomes part of the routine. Now, that doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen about a month in, two months in, three months in where, okay, every Monday I’m writing down these numbers. Every Tuesday I send this report to somebody. Every Friday I’m going to write these numbers out again. And then it’s just like how we have to chart after every client contact anyway. So it’s just another piece of the music therapy puzzle.
Kat: Yeah. I like what you said earlier about questioning “am I really alone?” because we are part of a bigger –documentation. The beautiful thing about that is getting to share our documentation and getting other disciplines, other professionals, coworkers, to read our documentation.
Do You Want Funding NOW?
If you’re ready to grow your program but aren’t sure where to start, then check out Funding & Program Development with Brittany Tachkov, MT-BC, for 3 CMTES! By taking the course, you will:
- Learn and practice communication skills that will captivate decision-makers
- Set yourself up for success by building a resource-rich framework for your program
- Advocate for your role and impact within organizations
- Create a proposal to get the funding and support you deserve as a leader in healthcare!