Speech-to-Speech

Per Bob's website: Speech-to-Speech is a service for people with speech disabilities. 

If you have a speech disability and live in the USA, you can now use a free† telephone relay service, available 24 hours a day. This service is similar to the TTY service available to the hearing disabled except that it does not require typing. "http://www.speechtospeech.org/index.html

Person-directed care

http://www.pioneernetwork.net/AboutUs/

How close (or far away) is your facility to this model? My current person-centered mission is diet and feeding. I would love to work more closely with dietitians and dietary managers, as well as nurses, to create a more varied and person-centered menu. I am trying to do so. We need finger foods, especially for patients with cognitive-communication disorders and dementia that affect deglutition. We need staff to have more time to spend with these patients, and to shift from focusing on intake in the least amount of time possible to a legitimate dining experience at that patient's level.

Speech Therapy is one of "America's 10 Least Stressful Jobs". Really?

Overworked? Make a Leap to America's 10 Least Stressful Jobs

What do you think?

I have somewhat flexible hours. I do have to work my eight hours a day. I have to be "on call" for late admissions about one week out of a month. I also cover one weekend day on about one weekend per month, but I get a Friday or Monday off to compensate. Sometimes I get to skip a month; we work it out.

I do struggle when my caseload gets too high, and I worry when it's too low. I do some work at home to prepare for tx sessions, and I constantly read and learn. I educate and collaborate with doctors, nurses, CNAs,  staff, families, and fellow therapists. I'm busy! But I do love it...

BHSM Bulletin Board

OK, so I'm not giving Picasso a run for his money, but here's my BHSM board. I have facts about ASHA, SLPs, and communication and swallowing disorders. In the middle is my BHSM "Fact of the Day".

Some of my patients helped with the design lay-out as a cognitive task.

By the way, I missed my post yesterday due to technical difficulties. Another post to come this evening.

Cognitive- Linguistic Tx: How do you address it in your setting?

I enjoy working with patient's on cognitive retraining, and recently have received a new book by Claudia Allen, as well as the Allen Cognitive Level Screen. Although the materials are geared toward Occupational Therapists (makes sense; Claudia Allen is an OT!), I find her model extremely helpful.

How do address cognitive impairments in your facility/ work setting? Do you collaborate with Occupational Therapists?

I am constantly striving to educate colleagues and staff about our scope of practice as SLPs in skilled nursing facilities. Yes, we do more than "feed people".

BHSM Update

I finally made a plan for BHSM, and put together a bulletin board in the facility with a description about what SLPs do, as well as information on communication, cognitive and swallowing disorders. I was keeping it "bare bones" at first, but then I looked around at the boards that the activities department puts together. They are pretty fancy and flowery! So, I used a bright yellow background with green trim, and added some flowers and flourishes here and there. Still, not too frou-frou.

One of my cognitive patients helped me with it as part of a problem solving task. This was only 15 minutes of our tx time that day, and I really had the board all planned out, but measuring and laying out the background and the borders was a good problem solving task, and now she tells everyone that she helped design it. She's quite proud! It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

I added a "BHSM Fact of the Day" space, which I made by taking a plastic page protector and taping a border around it to make a frame. I slip a different fact about speech, hearing, swallowing, communication etc. into it each morning.

I think that on the last week of BHSM, I will make up a short quiz based on the Fact of the Day information that I used, and give a small prize to whomever gets the most correct.

Any other SLPs in the SNFs (or anywhere) doing anything this month?

Widely Accepted Terms Related to Disability

I found this wonderful resource while reading about "Misconceptions About People with Hearing Loss", which inspired a recent blog post. I think I will print it and bring it to work.

DEAL: Glossary of Preferred Terms

As human beings, we will all make mistakes. Recently, I wrote about how I  used the term "hearing impaired". Now, however, I know the preferred term is "deaf" or "hard of hearing." Although, if a person described herself as "hearing impaired", then I would use that term, as clearly it is a term they accept and use themselves. 

I know this list relates primarily to performers and the arts, so it is not necessarily meant to be a comprehensive list for health care professionals, but I was surprised to see no entry related to people who stutter.

Spring Cleaning: How Long to Keep Textbooks?

Husband and I are participating in our seasonal ritual of cleaning out the old. We have consciously downsized  over the past two years, moving from a four bedroom house to much more humble digs in order to have time and resources for experiences versus things. 


As we move from room to room (bedroom and office are on the list for today), I come across old textbooks from graduate school. Most of my adult-centered materials are in my office at work, so these are primarily language development and disorders, articulation/ phonological disorders, audiology and fluency texts. I haven't needed to refer to them in about 3-4 years, but I feel like they are still great references. I do have limited storage space at home. I could pack them away in storage, but then I know I would never use them because, well, "out of sight, out of mind."

So, how long do you keep your old textbooks? Indefinitely? Some of these textbooks were actually given to me by other clinicians who either left the field or only worked with a certain population.

Check yourself before you, well, you know...

ASHA posted this link to Hearing Health Magazine, and it truly opened my eyes to some misconceptions that I had held.

17 Misconceptions about People with Hearing Loss
By: Janice Schacter

I usually feel certain that I am addressing people with communication disorders, cognitive impairments, or physical disabilities in a respectful and professional way. I see them as a person first, then as a "person with ____". When I worked in the schools and spent more time on language disorders and fluency disorders, one of my primary educational outreaches was for professionals and families not to assume that any child with a LLD, fluency disorder, or LD had a lower IQ. In the geriatric population, I try to educate staff so that they know that a person with aphasia still retains their intelligence, and that persons with dementia can still participate in daily life.

When I I started to read the article, I was thinking that I would be pleased with myself for avoiding any misconceptions concerning hearing loss. Wrong! I am glad that I did not fall under any of the "major" misconceptions (deaf people have lower IQs, people with hearing loss are unsuccessful, etc.), but here are some of the ideas I've been able to re-examine:

PEOPLE WITH HEARING LOSS TEND TO BE OLDER ADULTS.
I think I looked twice at this because I work in geriatrics, but this helped me put things back into perspective. I might add that another misconception people hold is that all older adults are hearing impaired hard of hearing. My skin crawls when I hear a nurse or CNA yelling into the ear of a person with dementia or aphasia, thinking that they must not hear well because they are slow to respond.

DEAF, HEARING IMPAIRED, HANDICAPPED OR DISABLED ONE IS AS GOOD AS THE OTHER.
I do believe I have used the term "hearing impaired". Look above-- I caught myself while typing this blog post! I thought it sounded, well, professional and described a patient's impairment, as we are required to do on our evaluations. I also use "reduced hearing acuity" and "hard of hearing", especially when the patient/ family describes hearing loss, but this has not been addressed by an audiologist or documented by an MD. I did some preliminary web research and found this on ASL University : DrVicars: Politicians used to think the word "Deaf" was not PC. Politicians preferred the term "hearing impaired," but the Deaf community loves the word "Deaf." You could say it is "CC" --culturally correct. I am doing more research on this because I am kind of passionate about these things, but for now my feeling that it's best not to use the term "hearing impaired".

I have another blog post in the works about acceptable terms and professional language, but let's wrap this one up for now. I believe it is so important to remain aware of the misconceptions that can creep in, as well as the changes in culture and attitudes. I like to refer to people as they prefer, and when in doubt...check yourself!

Coping with Caregiving

Coping with Caregiving is an internet radio show focused on long term care, planning, and aging in general. The fourth segment from the top is an interview about dysphagia.

Keeping Up...

A Blog a Day is difficult, given that after my 9-5 job, I rush off to dance class, Capoeira, rehearsal or some other activity. And sometimes I like to just hang out with my husband too.

This week I started posting a BHSM "Fact of the Day" on the bulletin board that I decorated for BHSM. So far, I am getting great feedback from staff, and the information is sparking conversations about what SLPs actually do.

We returned from a long weekend in St. Augustine, exhausted and with an ailing vehicle, on Sunday. On Monday, I hit the ground running, fueled by caffeine! My May 2 blog post never materialized, so I have a bonus post today.

I know everyone is reading posts and blogs that are asking, "What are you doing to celebrate BSHM?" Well, what are you doing? Once upon a time, when I worked in the school system, we had contests for the kids, made posters, announced communication facts over the PA system, held coloring contests, and so on.

This year, I am putting up a bulletin board on one of the halls in the SNF; I have one or two high-level patients who could assist me as part of therapy. I want to have some sort of a staff contest, but I haven't fleshed the details out yet. I have three more weeks, right? I did buy some appreciation gifts for our department. That just about sums up all of my plans so far, although I am hoping some inspiration strikes and I get something more exciting going.

I just noticed today the sometimes I type "Better Speech and Hearing Month" and sometimes I refer to it as "Better Hearing and Speech Month"; however, it is officially BHSM on the ASHA site.

Another link for those of us working in dysphagia therapy: http://www.dysphagia.com/

Dysphagia on the Web

Most of the information and therapy materials on the web seem to be geared towards peds and school-based practice. I love the Dysphagia Therapy group on Facebook , and the group's creator also has her own blog focusing on dysphagia.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_102453736503465

http://apujo5.blogspot.com/

And since I'm catching up on blogs, here is ASHA's official blog.

http://blog.asha.org/

A Blog a Day in May

In celebration of Better Speech and Hearing Month (BSHM), I am posting about a communication, cognitive or swallowing topic related to adults each day. Cureently, I am out of town visitng relatives, so today's blog post serves to annouce that May is Better Speech and Hearing Month!

http://www.asha.org/bhsm/