Making the Transfers

Working in hospice has really allowed me to use the knowledge I have gained from the classroom setting and begin to apply it to real life music therapy situations. We spent a lot of time in my Music in Special Education course discussing adaptive instruments and how to make and utilize them in the special education setting. At this point, I had already accepted my internship in the hospice setting and didn't really consider the possibility of running into a situation during my internship where I would have to implement these skills. Turns out, I have a patient at a skilled nursing facility that was born without fingers. One of my competencies this month is to use rhythm instruments in a session, as that is something I don't get to do that often with a lot of my patients. As the month came to a close, time was running out to complete this competency, and I began to consider the possibility of implementing rhythm instruments with this particular patient. Digging through the music therapy department instruments here at HPBC, I discovered this:

It is a strap of bells that is able to be velcroed around the patient's arm or wrist. I cannot wait to use this with my patient tomorrow and cannot wait to tell you all how it went! The moral of this post is: never think you won't use a particular skill or bit of information from a class geared toward a different setting than the one you are going to be working with! :) That's all for today!