Music Therapist, Thought Disorders Unit)

Responsibilities

• Contributes in creating a learning environment that values, empowers, enriches and supports patients/students and other staff.
• Develops a professional treatment plan that meets patient needs and complements the services provided by other treatment team members.
• Applies knowledge of normal growth and development for specific patient population through the use of accepted conceptual principles, e.g. Erikson.
• Provides professional music treatment/services to individuals and groups based on the specific needs and diagnosis of the patient populations.
• Completes written documentation and data entry into the electronic medical records (EMR) to record initial patient assessment and ongoing treatment and progress through discharge in compliance with Hospital and program standards.
• Reports pertinent patient observations to treatment team.

Requirements

• Comprehensive knowledge of clinical psychology and music theory and practice and basic computer usage skills - acquired through a Bachelor’s degree in music therapy from a college or university program approved by the American Music Therapy Association plus 1-2 years related experience or through a Masters degree in music therapy from an accredited college or university plus 3-6 months related work experience.
• Must be licensed by the State Board of Examiners for Audiologists, Hearing Aid Dispensers, Speech-Language Pathologists, and Music Therapists to practice Music Therapy at the time of appointment and continuously while holding the position.
• One of the following certifications is required at the time of appointment and continuously while holding the position: Must be certified by the Certification Board of Music Therapists (BC-MT) or hold the designations of ACMT, CMT or RMT.
• Sufficient to interact effectively and professionally with multidisciplinary staff, faculty, and patients from a wide variety of diagnostic groups, cultural backgrounds, and functioning levels (51-80% of work time).
• Sufficient to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment interventions and programs.
• Sufficient to adapt and modify treatment approaches and techniques where treatment objectives are difficult to achieve.
• Frequent exercise of safety precautions with emotionally disturbed and often unpredictable patients (21 – 50% of work time) produces a high level of mental/visual fatigue.
• Requires talking, hearing, mid-range vision, depth perception, color vision and field of vision.