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One year after graduation, CMU alumnus is transforming patient care through music
CMU alumnus Loghan Puhach is a Certified Music Therapist at Riverview Health Centre, where he helped establish a full-time music therapy program that supports patients and their families.
Just one year after graduating from CMU with a Bachelor of Music Therapy, Loghan Puhach is working what he calls "a dream come true."
After completing his internship at Riverview Health Centre in Winnipeg, Puhach successfully advocated for the creation of a full-time music therapy position. Today, as a Certified Music Therapist, he brings comfort, connection, and healing to patients and their families while helping expand access to music therapy across the health centre.
After graduating with the CMU Class of 2024, Puhach completed an eight-month internship in palliative care and chronic respiratory care at Riverview in 2025.
When the internship came to an end, he didn't want music therapy to end with it. Puhach developed a proposal for a full-time music therapy position and presented it to senior leadership, supported by the advocacy of staff members and residents. The position was established with funding from the Riverview Health Centre Foundation and the National Music Centre's Music Therapy Initiative.
"While Certified Music Therapists have been working in Winnipeg for over 30 years, there are still limited numbers of full-time, salaried, union positions for music therapists in healthcare... Often budget constraints mean that facilities will contract a music therapy clinician for a few hours weekly rather than creating permanent staff positions," said Lee-Anne Dowsett, Associate Professor of Music Therapy at CMU. "The leadership team at Riverview recognized music therapy as an important part of the interdisciplinary team and created a position where the music therapist could work on both immediate and long-term client needs, to offer both breadth and depth of services."
Puhach began in the role in September.
"It felt really good personally, but in the bigger picture, it was really meaningful to think about expanding the local footprint of music therapy," he said.
A day on the job varies endlessly for Puhach.
He leads group sessions for long-term care residents that encourage social connection and bring enrichment to their daily lives. Together they listen to music, sing, play instruments, and share the memories and stories the songs evoke. "People talk about how it's nice to see everyone come alive again," he said, explaining that it's a chance for residents to express themselves in a different way and often reconnect with their sense of self. "A lot of residents are eager to participate and give a lot of positive feedback."
In palliative carem Puhach provides individual therapy that helps patients process difficult emotions through music. Family members often find comfort in hearing songs that were meaningful throughout their loved one's life, whether it's a favourite hymn or the song played at a wedding. "They feel it's meandingful to be reconnected with them in that way, when they might not be able to connect with them physically or even emotionally anymore if the person isn't very responsive outwardly."
Patients receiving MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) "have asked for the music of their life—songs that have really strong personal significance for them—to be played while they're getting their provision," Puhach said. "It's an honour to be with that person, but also being let in by their family, too, because they are also really impacted by that moment."
In smaller dementia care groups, he helps reisents improve their focus and remain present. Singing or playing a drum while maintaining eye contact for even 30 to 60 seconds at a time is a huge accomplishment. People with dementia can experience a lot of confusion and anxiety, so these activities aim to reduce those feelings.
He also works with patients in chronic respiratory care, using singing and wind instruments to strengthen breathing, and with stroke patients, helping them rebuild speech through singing and improve walking through rhythm and tempo. "When we sing, it's using a different part of our brain than when we speak, so we're able to bypass the injured part of the brain," he said. "It's super rewarding."
Puhach credits the Bachelor of Music Therapy program at CMU for preparing him for the with the broad skillset needed for such a multifaceted career. "The program was super comprehensive—I think as students we all feel that when we're in it... it's very intense and there's a lot of ground to cover."
Before his internship, he completed four practicum placements spanning a variety of demographics like long-term care, children with developmental needs, and teens in a psychiatric in-patient program.
"Our students get practice designing and implementing music therapy interventions for many different goal areas, including physical, social, communication, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual domains of health," Dowsett said.
For Puhach, classroom learning and clinical experience were never isolated from each other. "There were always opportunities with our supervisor and our profs and our peers to talk about everything we were doing." They asked questions and helped each other brainstorm solutions to challenges they were facing.
As Riverview's only music therapist, Puhach works in all 12 care units, while many music therapists spend an entire career specializing in just one area. The self-reflection and self-evaluation muscles he developed at CMU have been invaluable in navigating the enormous scope of his work.
Looking ahead, he hopes the program's funding will increase so they can hire more music therapists to address the needs that far exceed the capacity of his position. In the meantime, he's enjoying doing the heavy lifting that is laying a solid foundation for music therapy at Riverview and cultivating a variety of options for the CMU music therapy students that he hopes to take on in the near future.
"As a student, Loghan worked hard to develop his skills both as a musician and as a therapist," Dowsett said. "He has developed into a strong, reflective music therapist."
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