Zach's Interview

The Focus of my project was on understanding more about the older adults in the community and what needs for them are being under served.

Through my community partner I learned that older adult facilities in the area, through no fault of their own, are overworked and understaffed. The only social interactions that some older adults receive is when they decide to leave their room in an assisted living facility or in a Medicare setting. Older adults that are not extroverts might not leave their room due to being in an unfamiliar environment. The one person that they would consistently interact with is a registered nurse or registered assistant and those individuals have been spread thin in facilities and might not have a lot of time to give to each of their clients. Older adults that do not go out of their way to interact could be isolated socially. Older adults in most facilities don’t have goals beyond maintaining Homeostasis. The interviewee shared that insurance does not cover paying for maintaining functioning, only improving functioning. The discussion then turned towards music therapy and the capacity to which it is seen in older adult facilities. Music therapy is not typically in the budget in older adult facilities along with other therapies like PT and OT, it is instead under the category of activities. Music therapy comes out of the activity budget. Learning about this was disheartening. Even facilities with a music budget equate music therapy costs to the equivalent to that of a performer.

Both understanding of music therapy services and isolated older adults who don’t share matter. Older adults being isolated is terrible for their mental health and can contribute to faster cognitive decline and faster motor decline. Faster decline could lead to more risk of falling or increased assistants with ADLs which could end up costing facilities even more money, or worse, could lead to older adults being isolated in their rooms even further to mitigate these risks.

Some ideas that could be done would be some sort of musical stories interventions where the older adults share their experiences and stories to a group and then contribute to building a playlist that depicts their experiences. Another idea is getting a group of students together to go over to a facility one day and everyone just spends some time with these older adults that less frequently come out of their room. They could discuss interests, songs, professions and listen to the stories that these individuals would like to share. Even though it is not musical it might be a good idea for a current or future music therapist to do this to better understand the perspective of older adults in the community and the experiences they’ve gone through. Lastly, an idea could be to go to a facility to provide an in-service where the staff could be shown monetary benefits of music therapy and could hone in on the differences between music performing and music therapy. The social benefit to come out of this would be that a facility that understands what music therapy does could be more inclined to accept services and the music therapist could target social needs.

Something that could have a positive outcome is any participating individual would have a greater understanding of older adults which could help inform their own practice. Another positive outcome would be more music therapy services being requested by older adult facilities in the area. Lastly, an intangible outcome could be a good memory or good form of emotional expression for the older adult and a higher quality of life.  

Resources that could be beneficial moving forward are confirming with other music therapists and maybe reading research regarding older adults and how sociability affects their quality of life. I want to explore the monetary benefits of music therapy and I would also like to explore the experiences of older adults and how a deeper understanding could influence practice.