Thoughtful Thursday: The First "Educated in Pandemic" Intern

I have come to a realization.

I am not going to be able to do my "regular" routine of training interns for a bit because "pandemic educated" interns are different from my last batch of interns which were "went through mostly live music therapy experiences but then had the internship thing interrupted by a global pandemic" interns.

Let me explain.

I have a new intern. This new intern has been with me for two whole days now and has seen me do one day of live music therapy sessions with clients. This intern, who I will call 33, mentioned that it was great to observe live interactions. That started me thinking, and I asked - 33 saw live music therapy interactions during the first practicum semester and then had to go virtual for all other interactions after that.

Hmmm.

So, this means that my next several interns will have less direct service interaction experience and lots more telehealth interaction experience. Now, I knew that, but it is much more relevant when it becomes something that is right before you.

Since my current intern is the first of my "not really all that experienced in working with clients in a live setting" intern, I am learning about the developmental needs of this generation of music therapy interns who appear to be knowledge rich but experience poor.

Okay, before anyone gets all persnickety about this assessment, I am not assigning blame or criticizing anyone in any type of way. This is just the way I am seeing the needs of my current intern and know that we have all done as much and as best as we could and can during this pandemic. It just means that I have to shift my way of doing things to accommodate what each intern will need from me as mentor and coach.

My outlook has to be a bit more like what I would do for a first semester practicum student - lots of explanations, lots of modeling and directed observations, lots of opportunities to try new things, and lots of encouragement. The nice thing about working with an intern is that all of the knowledge is there from the educational process, but the synthesis of that information into clinical interaction is delayed because it is more difficult to adjust and adapt to what a client brings into the session when the interactions occur via video or asynchronous formats.

What does this mean for what I am going to do with this intern? Well, I will continue to provide individualized clinical training for each intern that arrives, but I think I will be asking a bit more about live versus in-person sessions with clients from now on. Just so I know what to expect when interns start with me.

Will this change my assignments or other parts of my current internship program? Yes. It will. The assignments will be the same things, but I think I will spend more time explaining why these things are directly related to session implementation and the doing of music therapy since the current crop of interns will have less experience in live settings. There will be lots more opportunities (and expectations) around observing me during sessions - both good ones and the lousy sessions that happen at times as well. We will talk about clinical decision making more than I have done in the past. I will spend much more time talking about what is going through my head during sessions. We will continue to get used to the process of working in sessions with clients without rushing in to take over everything. I may change my intern webinars a bit to reflect this new reality for interns. We may not be able to talk about higher level topics quite yet - we may have to start farther back into more foundation topics of clinical interaction. I will make all of this a bit more of a focus for the next several interns coming in to my training program.

All I know for sure is that it was a bit of a shakeup in my way of thinking when 33 mentioned that the last opportunity to see live music therapists doing music therapy in person with clients was 2020. I knew that, but it hadn't really sunk in until the moment that 33 spoke about it. This cannot be a "business as usual" type of thing because intern 33 has not had an "education as usual" experience.

That is my Thursday revelation. It's not a big one, but it does have relevance to more people than just me. There is no such thing as "business as usual" anymore.

(I am delaying my shower because I am hoping for an inclement weather day, but it doesn't seem to be appearing for me, so I guess I will end my thoughts here and get ready for the next day of this new semester...three groups and a new student and two individuals to look forward to today...plus thinking more about this particular topic as I go through my routines..."see" you very soon!) 

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