Promoting Personal Functioning in Supervision
Do you find it challenging to maintain your current weight? Take these simple steps for weight maintenance on a daily basis! Music therapy is a health care and educational profession that utilizes clinically and empirically-based music interventions to achieve individual goals within a therapeutic relationship, provided by credentialed professional musicians with an academic degree who have also completed a supervised internship. Music therapy can have many beneficial effects for individuals, including improving emotional well-being, physical health, social functioning and communication skills; developing cognitive, motor and behavioral responses to stressors; providing rehabilitative experiences for persons with physical and mental disabilities; aiding people recover from illness injury or disease; and increasing the quality of life for individuals families and groups (AMTA, 2015b).
To become a licensed and certified Music Therapist (MT), one must obtain either a bachelor’s or master’s degree from an accredited institution and complete 1,200 hours of supervised clinical training at an internship site. Upon passing the national board certification exam, graduates are awarded the credential MT-BC (Music Therapist-Board Certified) by the Certification Board for Music Therapists. This credential is valid for five years during which time they must meet continuing education requirements to maintain licensure.
Supervision is an essential aspect of music therapy internships, and supervisors play a significant role in creating an encouraging work atmosphere. The American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) Standards of Clinical Practice require music therapy supervisors to uphold high ethical standards of conduct and professionalism throughout their supervision activities. Furthermore, the AMTA Code of Ethics asks supervisors to serve as role models for music therapy interns and other clinicians within their field by serving as role models themselves.
Supervisory styles are heavily influenced by several factors, most notably the supervisor’s professional experience and personal preferences. A supervisor’s influence can be felt early in life through their supervisor’s interpersonal style as well as how they approach professional competencies.
Phenomenological research has demonstrated that an individual’s early supervisory experiences shape how they view future supervision. This research suggests adapting an individual’s developmental needs to a particular model can enhance their supervision. Furthermore, using such a model during the initial weeks of an internship could be an effective and beneficial method for building supervisees’ early supervisory skills and confidence levels.
This study utilized a survey methodology to collect an extensive sample of music therapy internship supervisors employed at both national roster and university-affiliate programs. Respondents were then asked to rate their own supervision styles on a five-point Likert scale.
Results: The survey collected responses from 77 music therapy internship directors and supervisors, most of whom work at national roster internship sites or are affiliated with a university program. This response sample is unique since many related research surveys do not capture responses from all possible intern supervisors.
This study suggests that tailoring an individual’s supervision style to their developmental needs can be beneficial and may increase overall satisfaction as music therapy supervisors. Furthermore, this research indicates a specific model of music therapy supervision may best be pre-sentated to future supervisors during their own internship period.
