Exhaustion, burnout and ethical challenges can be pitfalls for all health professionals, and despite the preconception to the contrary, music therapists are not immune, often with devastating life and career changing consequences.

This workshop will explore professional supervision for RMTs. It will ask the question ‘Why do RMTS need or even benefit from supervision if it is not a pre-requisite for annual registration’?

It will aim to be realistically relevant, hopefully humorous and discerningly direct and honest, so that each participant from their various diverse cultural and working environments will feel heard and understood. It will aim to offer a wide eclectic exploration of this mostly misunderstood yet beneficial methodology which aims to facilitate safe and healthy practice for music therapists, enabling their continuing creative growth and wellbeing in whatever diverse environment they are pursuing their music therapy career.

The workshop will be in two distinct parts – a presentation with the opportunity for discussion, followed by an experiential practical component. It will commence with an interactive discussion about what clinical supervision is and is not, and drawing on the presenter’s extensive professional experience and training will explore its possible benefits as well as perceived negative aspects, with an occasional vignette to stimulate and challenge open discussion. The second part will be a creative interactive experience in supervision.

This workshop is for all RMTs, whether they receive regular, intermittent or no supervision and aims to answer many of their questions and give more understanding of how creative super-vision can help their life-work balance and psychological wellbeing within a safe ethical framework.