Being an Internship Director: Extending the Internship to Accommodate Intern Needs

Being an internship director means there are times when I have to deliver bad news to an intern. This might be something like client or staff issues, remediating skills, ethical situations, changes in supervision, or other things that come up during the time an intern is with me. One of the easiest things to talk to an intern about is extension of the internship past the proposed end date due to need to get clinical hours, but that is never the easiest of situations either.

One of the things that I like about being a National Roster Internship Director is the ability to change and adapt the program to accommodate the needs of each intern that arrives through my door. I tell my interns that their time with me will be THEIR TIME WITH ME. Each intern needs different things from me, so no intern's program will be identical to another intern's program.

I have had to extend the programs of several of my interns. Most of the time, when we extend a program, it is because of attendance. I feel very strongly that interns must spend 1020 hours in my program, and that is the expectation that is lined out in the fact sheet. When interns are not present at the facility, we have to extend in order to get to those hours. I have never extended an intern's time with me based on competency evaluation, but I know that I can, if it is something that we all agree upon during an intern's time at my facility.

Now, interns have the opportunity to make up 24 hours of missed time but only if they are caught up with all of their assignments. To make up time, I offer opportunities for continuing education, workshops, making visual aids at home, doing other things like assessing concert halls with a universal design perspective. If interns are behind on their regular assignments, then I do not offer the opportunity to make up time outside of being at the facility. I figure that if interns were unable to finish the six assignments that they have known about since their first day at the facility in the time that they were present, then they should be using "homework" time to finish the required assignments before getting more to do. (I offer plenty of time for interns to work on their assignments during the required times at the facility, but some interns prefer not to use that time to work on their assignments. I don't get it.)

To extend an intern's time at the facility, there are two things I have to do. The first is to inform both the intern and the academic director of the need to extend as soon as possible. The second only applies if I have an overlap where there may be more than 2 interns per supervising music therapist - then, I have to contact the AIAC for an exception to the National Roster Internship Guidelines. I do not have that circumstance often, so I have never really had to do an exception request for this situation.

That's it. If an intern is not finished with the required 1020 hours and all the assignments, then I extend the intern's time until those two things have been completed. That extension often is rough for me, but that's a post for another time...

Thanks for reading. Any questions? Comments? Experiences that you want to share? Comment below!