Ashley's Interview

Military Veterans, Physical Therapists, and the VA Medical Center

Who: Ryan Montgomery - Physical Therapist at the VA Medical Center in Lexington, KY

Date of Interview: March 16, 2022

Length of Interview: ~40 Minutes

Interview Questions: 

1. What are the demographics for the patients that you most commonly see?

2. Do you feel there are any limitations or disconnects you or your colleagues have with your patients?

3. What are some of the needs you feel you as a physical therapist have or that your patients have?

4. Of these needs, what areas of your practice do you think music-based resources may be able to help?

5. Do you have any questions about using music to reach these goals or meet your identified needs?

Interview Reflection Blog

For this service-learning project, I will be providing three different musical resources for my community partner, Ryan Montgomery, to be used with his physical therapy veteran patients at the VA Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky to aid in decreasing stress and increasing relaxation, motivation, and consistency in completing at-home exercise treatments. Things I want to remain aware of while working on this project with Ryan and his patients are potential triggers the patients may have, preventing misconceptions about music resources versus music therapy, and providing resources that can span age groups.

I met with Ryan who works at the VA Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky as a physical therapist. He works with veteran patients whose ages range from early twenties to around ninety years old. He stated that the bulk of his patients are between thirty and fifty years old. He typically sees anywhere from eight to ten patients a day, with the physical therapy department roughly seeing thirty to forty new patients a week. He said that he works alongside four physical therapists and three occupational therapists.

Ryan told me how many of his patients have been struggling most recently with insomnia and chronic pain. He believes that this may be a product of veterans dealing with chronic stress and non-compliance with prescribed physical therapy treatment plans. He stated that him and his co-workers could really use assistance in developing ideas on how to help with these concerns. He talked about how he spends a lot of time talking to his patients about music and the positive responses he gets from those conversations. Being a musician himself, he thought that music may be a great way to get his patients engaged with their at-home exercise programs. We then discussed how music may be a tool that can be used to bridge the gap and positively engage his patients, fostering structure, encouragement, and motivation.

Ryan is aware of my being a music therapist; therefore, we had a long conversation about difference between providing music therapy services and providing music-informed resources. After talking about a lot of different ideas regarding how to utilize music in his setting with this veteran patients, we agreed on these three resources:

• A Breathing with Music Resource

• A Stretching to Music Resource

• An Exercising with Music Resource

With the nature of how Ryan sees his patients, we decided that it might be best to try each resource for about a week with a multitude of patients. Then, he would spend a few days of the next week gathering feedback from his patients about how each resource went for them. With that information, we would be able to make improvements to implement for the next activity.

After meeting with Ryan, I spoke with my professor, Dr. Reschke-Hernandez, about how to refine the ideas Ryan and I came up with. She provided me with some guidance over what resources to consider for my next steps. I am going to be looking into works centering around recorded music, exercise, insomnia, chronic pain, and veterans. I will also search to see if there is any research regarding breathing exercises and veterans.