The Marketing of Myself...

Part of the reason that I started this blog was to document my journey as a new (now new-ish) professional music therapist. I also wanted to showcase the blog to MT students and new peers who may be able to relate. I wanted to give an update post about some exciting things that have been happening within the scope of my job!

I have been very busy as of late with several different projects. One of my main focuses has been to keep myself active within my workplace and accessible to many different departments. My strategy is to market myself for music therapy, but also as a teammate to my colleagues. The big benefit for me and my growing department is that I get to prove to my employer that both music therapy and myself are valuable to the hospital.

• "Bleach It" video project

There is a Clostridium Difficile (C-diff) committee at my hospital, which my direct supervisor and her supervisor are involved with. My supervisor is a nursing leader and she oversees our Med-Surg floors at the hospital. Her boss (who I proposed my position to) is the Associate Chief Nursing Officer of the hospital. We are constantly working on education at the hospital, and the focus of this project was to use music and humor to educate our staff on blast-cleaning C Diff patient rooms with certified bleach wipes. The Associate Chief Nursing Officer made the song suggestion..."Push It" by Salt 'n Pepa....and I agreed to rewrite the lyrics to focus on safety protocol for disease prevention.

Watch "Bleach It"

I am very excited to also be working on a new music montage video for our blood clot prevention team. All I will share is that I have re-written the lyrics to "Under Pressure" by Queen/David Bowie and am awaiting response on going forward with this potential education project piece.

• Diversity and Inclusion Council

I am a brand new member of the D&I Council at my workplace. I am hoping to gain some momentum to plan and implement the second annual 'Sounds of the Holiday' event that was piloted last December 2018. Staff, patients, and family members contributed to a concert featuring music of different cultures and holiday celebrations. We had an awesome program last year, and I am hoping to add some personal touches with stories about tradition and culture shared as well as music.

• Consult Process

When I started my position I could receive music therapy consults in electronic form via our medical record software. However, these consults could only be entered by Attending Doctors. This was very frustrating and limiting, as the doctors are so busy with tens upon tens of patients, that they may only see a patient once before they are discharged. With assistance from our IT department I was able to extend the referral process beyond just doctors. I now am able to receive electronic music therapy consults from nurses, social workers, occupational/physical/speech therapists, chaplains, pharmacists, and so forth! It has already proven very successful and is one more step towards making music therapy more accessible to the patients. PR included this tid-bit in one of our weekly newsletters, with lyrics to the song I re-wrote in hopes of making the message really 'stick' in the ear of staff:

(To the tune of 'If You're Happy and You Know It')

If you need a music consult oh so bad,

Just enter Power Orders then click Add.

Search for music therapy,

Enter the doctor and reasoning,

If you need a music consult I'm so glad.

• Budget Items

As of this month, I will officially have my very own work-designated iPad. I store all of my chord sheets in an apple app called OnSong. This app was developed for music therapists and with assistance from music therapists as a resource for lead sheet storage and easy organization and transposition. Basically I can organize all of my guitar chord and lyric sheets by genre so that when I'm visiting patients I can easily access my music without having to haul around a huge notebook and then having cross-contamination issues at the hospital. Prior to having my work iPad, I had been using one I personally purchased. In addition to this wonderful news, my supervisor has approved purchasing me a new instrument every quarter within her nursing department budget! 

• Perinatal Bereavement Committee

I have posted previously about my assistance with this committee, but to refresh my workplace has bi-annual memorial services for infants that have passed away at the hospital. I am always very lucky to participate in these services. This past June we had our summer Wings of Hope service, which had great attendance from mothers and fathers alike. I sang "Fly Away" by Amy Lynn and "Lead Kindly Light" by Audrey Assad.

• LGBTQ Pride Celebration

A colleague asked me to provide music for our Pride celebration this past June. I was so honored to be asked and included, that I knew the perfect songs off the top of my head. Employees shared what Pride means to them, and the executives verbalized their support of diversity and inclusion within the organization. I sang "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper and "The Joke" by Brandi Carlile. "True Colors" has a very literal message that I think is perfect for Pride, especially with the lyrics 'Let your true colors shine...like a rainbow.' Brandi Carlile is an LGBTQ artist and her song "The Joke" is an amazing story of hope and empowerment for LGBTQ persons. Public Relations filmed part of a song below.

Watch "True Colors"

• Presentations

I had the honor to be a guest presenter at Northwest Missouri State's monthly NAfME (National Association for Music Education) student meeting during the spring semester to discuss music therapy, the education required, certification, and my job.

View NWMS Presentation

I also attended the Midwest Regional Music Therapy Conference, where I presented on how I successfully submitted by job proposal. Most of the attendees during my concurrent session were current music therapy students and interns, and it was so neat to see the fire in their eyes and the hope that they could propose for their own dream position and see it come to fruition.

View Midwest MT Conference Presentation

At the Midwest MT Conference I also had the privilege to accept an award for Music Therapy Advocacy on behalf of the Associate Chief Nursing Officer who went to bat for me and essentially helped me get my job. I spoke a few words that she emailed me when she found out she had been nominated for this award.

"I strongly believe in music as therapy and don't know what I'd do without music in my own life. I consider it a victory that we were able to make your position happen!"

And here is a very bad picture of me accepting the award since the administrator couldn't attend the ceremony.

The overall goal of this post is not to brag, but to share updates about what it's like building a new music therapy program and how I'm really striving to market myself and the profession. My overall goal is to grow my position and department, continue to learn and better myself, provide services to the patients I see, and to retain my job.

Hope you are well. Thanks for walking alongside me in this journey.
Lauren