Podcasts about hearing sciences

Question of the Week - From the Naked Scientists

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2024 54:13

Welcome to the Aphasia Access, Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Ellen Bernstein Ellis, Director Emeritus of the Aphasia Treatment Program at Cal State East Bay in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. Brief topic intro I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Dr Felicity Bright. We'll discuss her research looking at factors impacting wellbeing, engagement and hope. Guest bio Felicity Bright is a registered speech language therapist and associate professor in rehabilitation at Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her research examines cultures of care, and in particular, how the cultures and practices in rehabilitation respond to the needs and priorities of patients and those who support them. She has a particular interest in stroke and in the needs and experiences of those with communication impairment through her work, Felicity seeks to support practitioners services and rehabilitation organizations and to provide better person centered care. Listener Take-aways In today's episode you will: Explore how qualitative research promotes the nuanced study of meaningful clinical practice Consider cultural differences in well-being and what this might mean for how we work with people with aphasia and their support networks Reflect on the importance of having discussions with patients about hope and well-being Discuss how culture and organizations impact healthcare practice for individuals with aphasia Show notes edited for conciseness Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Felicity, welcome to our show. Thank you for agreeing to be our guest today. Felicity Bright Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Welcome Felicity. We're going to start today with an icebreaker question. The one you selected for today is, “Do you have a favorite book or movie about aphasia? Felicity Bright It was hard to choose one. Actually, I was just looking at my bookshelf and I went back to myself as a fairly new speech and language therapist quite a few years ago now. One that was really transformative for my practice was Talking about Aphasia by Suzie Parr and Sally Bing. It's a classic, but it was a beautifully written book that really opened my eyes to the experiences of people with aphasia beyond all the technical work that we'd learned in university and so on, but it brought to life the humanity of the people who have aphasia, and really helped me rethink why I do what I do, and what the real impacts of aphasia can be for people. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Yes, that's a beautiful book that brings that all to the forefront. And I want you to say the title and author again, in case I spoke over you a moment ago, Felicity Bright The book is Talking about Aphasia and the authors are Susie Parr, Sally Bing and Sue Gilpin with Chris Ireland, Ellen Bernstein-Ellis We'll put that (i.e. citation) into the reference list on our speaker notes. So thank you. And as we start today's interview, I was wondering if you'd like to share your path from clinician to researcher, because we've had several guests who have started in clinical work and then came to their doctoral work and research a little bit later. So, I'd love it if you could share that with our listeners. Felicity Bright Sure. So I worked as a speech and language therapist in New Zealand. We are speech language therapists. I worked in a range of neurological settings, from acute stroke neurosurgery, did a little bit of ICU, did some rehab in inpatient services and in community, and really enjoyed that work, but I'd always had a long standing interest in research. I was a bit of a geek, you know, When I was in training, that was, that was me, I was the geek. And so I'd always kind of expected at some point I would go down the research track. It was prompted after I had my first baby, and my work required me to either go back full time or to not work. And so at that point, I chose to not go back to work full time, and a research job came up at Auckland University of Technology, and I'd followed their work for a while. We don't do speech therapy here, it was rehabilitation research, and I was offered an opportunity to be a research officer doing interventions as part of a randomized control trial with people with traumatic brain injury. And so that kind of gave me the space to bring together some clinical work, but also some research work. It gave me the opportunity to do my Masters alongside this with my fees paid. So that was fantastic. And it really solidified for me that I was quite happy and enjoyed being in that kind of clinical research space. And so I've been in the university now for 15, nearly 16 years Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Wow, that's a great story. So now you have a 15 year old, right? Felicity Bright I have a 16 year old who is now taller than I am. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Well, thank you for sharing that. I'm just really looking forward to a discussion around some, what I consider critical but hard to define and challenging to research topics. like engagement, wellbeing and hope. I want to start by asking, how did you end up researching a topic like engagement or hope? You did say during our planning meeting that you research things that you're bad at, which made me laugh. So that sounds like some courageous and reflective exploration. So maybe talk a little more about that. Felicity Bright Yeah, I am a bit of a selfish researcher. I research the things that I find tricky and a little bit hard, because for me, I want to learn how can I do better at this? How can I help my students learn how to be better in these areas? How can I help clinicians not make the mistakes that I've made. I guess trying to be a better clinician has been at the heart of a lot of the work that I do. And you know, when I was working full time in clinical practice, I had patients who would stick with me where I just felt I let them down. They had such a short window of rehabilitation access. They were living with stroke for the rest of their lives. They maybe had eight or 12 weeks of speech therapy. There were just times when I really felt I missed the mark for them, when they didn't get the best rehab they could have had. And it was when I was working in the university in this randomized control trial of goal setting interventions after traumatic brain injury that it started to help me reflect on some of the why I was maybe having some of the challenges I was having. So in this trial, which was quite prescribed because it's a randomized control trial, I was noticing that patients seem to be engaging with these interventions a lot more than the people who I worked with in clinical practice, and that kind of surprised me a little bit. I also noticed that-- we were using Mark Ylvisaker's approach to goal setting around what is meaningful identity based goal setting--and people were identifying hopes and goals and dreams that would have left me panicking as a speech and language therapist. What do I do about this? But it made me realize, actually, I didn't need to panic about that, and there were ways to engage with people about their hopes and dreams that honored those hopes and dreams, that kept them alive. But also, I could see ways that I could work with this. I could bring my speech therapy hat and help people. And so it highlighted to me that maybe the things that I had perceived to be difficult or issues, didn't need to be and there were ways to think about these things differently and ways to work differently to better support people. So working on this trial, and I did some quite structured reflection around that with some of my colleagues, writing in auto ethnography around this, gave me the opportunity to reflect on these areas, but also highlighted that there was the real opportunity to do more nuanced and more detailed research that would bring to life different ways that we could support people to hold hope, to engage in rehabilitation that is meaningful and that might be able to produce some quite tangible suggestions to support clinicians and to support the people with stroke who we work with. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis I just want to say that these intangible, some what we call intangible topics that you've tackled, you always seem to end with tangible suggestions, and that's what I have found so inspiring. And we're going to circle back to hope in a few more questions. But, I just want to say, not only has my clinical thinking been informed and inspired by your research topics, but I've also just learned so much from the variety of qualitative methodologies that you've used in your work. I was wondering if you could share how you developed your expertise in qualitative research, maybe even offer some tips to people wanting to develop their own skill set. And okay, maybe I'm being a little selfish interviewer. You just said selfish researcher, but I found this challenging, and I've been trying to dip my toe, or I've fallen in head first, trying to develop my skill set around qualitative research. What's your advice? Felicity Bright I was really fortunate. I came into research, into a team that had qualitative expertise and that used a variety, but not a wide variety, of different qualitative approaches. And it was a team, and still is a team, that has really high standards for methodological rigor. So to us, it's really important to do research that is robust and rigorous and that anchors back to the underpinning theory and philosophy that underlies each of the approaches that we use. But I was also really lucky in my research that I had supervisors and bosses who really supported innovation, who didn't tell me, no, this is how we do things, who didn't expect me to come into a study and do it just as they had told me to do. But they created the space for me to explore when I was working as a clinical researcher, but also as a master's and as a PhD student. Really had no issues when I said I'm going to go to the library, and I would just sit in the library and read qualitative textbooks and come back with a completely hair brained idea, but that actually turned into something that was really interesting and meaningful. So the Voice Centered Relational Approach that I've used a number of times came from sitting in the library one afternoon and just reading Feminist Research Methodology books. And I think one of my tips would be read outside speech and language therapy. There's amazing work that is happening, not just in the health disciplines or education spaces, but I love reading health sociology journals. I get notifications of a number of different journal types that alert me to different work. One of my recent projects I used Applied Tensions Analysis, which I'd never heard of, but I had a notification come across for a paper about domestic violence settings and kind of how services work. That's not in my area of research or clinical expertise, but there was something within that abstract that made me go, oh, there's an idea there that is similar to the ideas that I'm trying to get at in my stroke research. And so reading widely, I use Twitter a lot as a way of, kind of coming up to date with different research. I use trial and error. I've tried things and got them terribly wrong. I tried Grounded Theory for about a year for my Masters, and it was atrocious. But also I found that doing research with people with aphasia pushes you to be innovative. A lot of the methodologies as they are published don't necessarily quite fit with the types of interviews or the types of data that we have, and so for me, that's provided an opportunity to test and do things differently. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis I mean, that's an inspiring response and encouraging support. So thank you. During our planning discussion, you also referred me to the Life Thread model and the 2008 article by Ellis Hill, Payne and Ward. What a wonderful article. So thank you for that. I was particularly taken with its implications for clinical practice and how it might guide us in asking questions in a better way to help us understand the social realities of our clients, to prioritize that. To understand how important the social reality is for our clients. Could you please share with our listeners some of the core concepts of the Life Thread model and how it's informed your work? Because I do see the connection there. Felicity Bright Yeah, I came across this, Carolyn Alice Hill, who developed it, I think, as part of her PhD, was a collaborator of one of my PhD supervisors, and so Cath put me onto it. But the Life Threads model is about identity. And Carolyn's work was in stroke, and she was kind of talking to how identity changes and develops over time. And the Life Threads model talks to how our lives and our identities are made up of many threads, and those threads, they can change over time. But when there's a traumatic event like a stroke, it can cause some threads to break or be frayed, and that can be really challenging. We know there's a lot of work around aphasia and identity construction and identity loss, that's come around. But also what we know is that stroke can also prompt people to think about what are the threads that they want to continue post stroke. Maybe there are some threads, I found in my hope research, where people are saying,”I don't want to be that person anymore. That's not something that I value”, and for them, sometimes the stroke could be an opportunity to rethink what are the threads that I now want to bring into my life as I weave this new identity of somebody post stroke, but still continues threads that have come through from before the stroke. We know from the hope research that I was doing that it was often really hard for people to see these threads. It kind of felt like there was a pre-stroke life and a post-stroke life, and that there was quite a disruption. Those threads were cut. And so for me, it prompted questions about how do our conversations as clinicians help people identify the threads that are important for them to thread through their life. What are the new threads that they want to pick up on? You know, some of the work I've done, and we will talk about this a bit later on, around life after stroke, has highlighted how actually a lot of the conversations that happen between clinicians focus around things like tasks and activities and doing things, but there isn't necessarily a lot of conversation about identity or about what is meaningful and what do people want to carry through, and how can clinicians support that? And I would say that if we can kind of tune into the threads that matter to people or that people want to matter in their lives, it gives us a chance to tailor therapy to be much more personalized, more meaningful and more engaging, and I would suggest, probably leads to better outcomes for people. What we know from quite a bit of the research, not just my research, but other work, is that people are often doing this identity work on their own, without support. And we know that it's really hard, because our identities are social and they're relational, and they occur through connection and through communication, all of these things that are disrupted by aphasia, often. And so I think the Life Threads model really prompts us to think how can we as clinicians, support people to engage in conversations about identity, and how can we overtly, really attend to supporting identity within the work that we do. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Wow, that's beautiful. And yes, I think there's been, fortunately, a growing understanding of the importance of looking at the lack of support for this identity work with us with our clients, and I can really see how the Life Threads model has played an important role in your thinking and research. I recommend our readers to the article because it has some great examples of how to maybe flex the way you ask questions to help understand the narrative better. So I think it's, a marvelous article, I just want to take a moment and let our listeners know about the fabulous interview that you did with Michael Biel on the ANCDS podcast where you discussed engagement and ways you might incorporate Goal Attainment Scaling to help our clients establish meaningful goals. I'll put the link to that, along with the citations to all of the work we're discussing today in our show notes. That also gives me a chance to say I don't have to cover everything today, because he did a really good job on those topics. But at the end of that podcast with Michael, you highlighted what was coming next, and that was your work on wellbeing. You've been exploring, and this is a quote by you, “what does it look like to explicitly attend to holistic, long term wellbeing?” Can you discuss some of the takeaways from your 2024 article, Psychosocial Well being After Stroke in Aotearoa, New Zealand, a Qualitative Meta-synthesis with your co authors, Ibell-Roberts and Wilson. Maybe we can just start by talking about the term psychosocial wellbeing. That's an important one to understand, but it can vary depending on one's cultural context. Just to start with that, so yeah, good luck with all of that! Felicity Bright It's a massive question, and it's funny, I started with the term psychosocial wellbeing, and I really intentionally used the language of psychosocial to kind of move away from thinking about just psychological wellbeing, which tended to be framed more from a mood perspective. And so I really wanted to be attending to some of the emotional, and the social, and the relational elements of wellbeing. But actually, I've now dropped the psychosocial because what we found is, when we talk to our people with stroke in the community, as part of our research, that term is completely meaningless to them, but the term wellbeing is something that resonates. Wellbeing is a really, firstly, a really nebulous term, but it's also really multifaceted. And I guess the place we've come to is, we view wellbeing as kind of quite unique to an individual, but it's deeply relational, and it's influenced through connection with people, with their cultures and with their communities, and all of those areas need attention. Now, in this piece of work that you referred to, Qualitative Metasynthesis, we were looking across the literature in Aotearoa, New Zealand, when we look at all the work that's been done, looking at life after stroke, and living life after stroke, what do people say about wellbeing and that highlighted that there were a number of features. Now, one thing I want to flag is that within New Zealand, we have an indigenous population, the Māori population of New Zealand, who have been here for centuries before Pakeha came and colonized New Zealand. And one of the things that's been really important in our work is to really make sure that we are upholding the voices of Māori, who are often either not included in research, or are involved in research that is not particularly culturally safe, or where their perspectives are kind of subsumed within the wider perspectives of the dominant Pakeha, or European culture. And so one of the things we've been really lucky to do with this is to have my colleague BJ Wilson, who was leading the Māori stream, so she engaged with our Māori data and literature uniquely. So we upheld that in its own right. That's context, because I'm going to talk to two different ways of thinking about wellbeing, one that was general from all of the literature and one that was specific to Māori . So when we look across all of the New Zealand literature, including the Māori literature, we kind of saw there were probably four key areas that seemed to matter for wellbeing. Having strong connections with family, with old, pre stroke friends, but also with new friends, people who had also been through stroke and had some similar experiences. The sense of self that was connected, where people had a sense of being connected to who they were before the stroke, who they are now, and have an idea of who do I want to be in the future? And there was a sense of coherence, sense of thread that went between those identities. There was, when they experienced wellbeing, a general sense of stability in the present. So things were okay now. It didn't mean that things were perfect. Some of the literature has suggested that people have to have positive emotions if they're going to have a sense of wellbeing. But actually, this qualitative meta synthesis, and the following qualitative work we've done has suggested, no, life is never 100% positive for any of us, but it's about having a balance of, yes, maybe there are some hard times, but also there are some good times as well. That overall, there's an equilibrium of emotions, Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Right the duality, like be able to hold the duality Felicity Bright Absolutely and kind of be okay with it, recognize that each of them has a time and a place. People also, when there was a sense of wellbeing, had a vision for the future, kind of a sense of moving towards that. So, yes, they were okay in the present, but they also had a sense that the present is not my future for the rest of my life. I can see a life that is meaningful and enjoyable, and I'm taking steps towards it. But when we looked at the literature from Māori, and this was the analysis led by my colleague, Bobby-Jo, it also came through ideas like whanaungatanga and ngā hono. So whanaungatanga talks to the notion of connections, and ngā hono talks to connections and kind of belonging as well. And that was a sense of connection to whānau. So that is to people's wider kinship networks, not just blood relations like a family would be, but to kinship networks who are meaningful to the person. Having a sense of connection and belonging in their community, but also to places of meaning. So not just people, but to places. We also notice an idea around ko ahau, so being connected to their identity as Māori, to their cultural identity, in a sense that their cultural identity was recognized and was valued and supported by those around them, including healthcare professionals. Ideas of mana and wairua. So mana talks to the inherent standing and value that an individual has. And we all know that in a healthcare context, actually, that can be diminished because you become a patient in the healthcare context. But actually, for wellbeing, having that mana recognized and valued and upheld was really critical. And when one's personhood is understood and respected, that also helped with the sense of wairua, I guess, the spiritual essence of the person. And finally, was the notion of rangatiratanga, which is about autonomy and control and the ability to make decisions for oneself. We can see that while there were similarities between our Māori and our non-Māori groups, there were also cultural differences. So for wellbeing, for Māori, had wider integrations with their sense of whānau, their family and kinship networks, and for their culture and wellbeing was unique for each whānau within the research. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis I'd like to take a moment and have you elaborate a little bit more on that concept of the relationship of whānau to wellbeing, and how the whānau may be impacted by the stroke and subsequent aphasia. So often our family and support network does not receive direct attention. And here, you're elevating it quite a bit, so maybe you could speak to that a bit more. This is really top of mind for me, because I just went to a think tank meeting and hearing the stories of the care providers saying, I'm not sure I mattered in this equation of my spouse's health care rehabilitation.It just really struck me to hear that. So please, let's talk a little bit more about those values. Felicity Bright Yeah, absolutely, for all of the people in our wellbeing research and in the previous hope research and so on that I've done, kind of people's whānau, their family and their social connections were absolutely critical to their recovery. And what came through, when we were looking at Māori experiences, was particularly also the intergenerational aspect, like sometimes within stroke services, we might think about the partner a little bit, not always particularly well. And I'll talk to that in a minute. But actually, we could also hear within our Māori whānau, kind of the impacts for generations above and generations below, like the disruption to relationships between grandparents and grandchildren, and how the grandparent who may have aphasia, would usually have a really critical role in passing on family knowledge, or passing on Matauranga, kind of Māori cultural knowledge. But actually, because of the way the stroke affected them, they couldn't do that and take that role on, and so that impacted not just on the relationship, but also kind of on the identity and how Māori culture could be passed on through a whānau unit. But we've also heard exactly what you talk about. Our services are focused around the person with stroke rather than their whānau, but our services are also really short term. And so what we can see from the research is that the family and the whānau become the connectors and the supporters. They are the consistent people. They hold, usually, deep knowledge of the person that often the healthcare professional doesn't hold. And we're doing some work at the moment around communication access in stroke units. And even in the context of really significant aphasia, we're hearing about how whānau, even though they don't know about aphasia, they don't know about communication strategies. But because they know how to read the person, they know their non verbal communication, they are actually really powerful translators, and hold the expertise that, actually, we don't hold as Speech and Language Therapists. But we also know that the whānau are key in helping people access supports outside the healthcare system, and they do a lot of that navigation work that they are left to do because the healthcare system doesn't do it very well. And like you say, that's really challenging when the whānau's well-being is impacted themselves, you know, but that isn't seen consistently, and it isn't acknowledged. They very quickly become the carer, rather than, this is this person's wife and they've been married for 45 years. Or this is this person's husband, and they've got three young children at home. What is this going to mean for their relationship as a couple, for their relationship as parents? And so the families are talking to us about the exhaustion and the grief and the shock and the loss. The relief that the person is alive, but again, the duality, there is relief, but there is also distress from the way that the stroke is impacting. And so we would really be calling for much more focus on everybody's wellbeing in this context, because if the wellbeing of whānau is not there, that impacts also on the wellbeing of the person. And I think we need to be shifting how we think about who is our client, whose needs do we serve, and what is our role in supporting the social and relational context around the person Ellen Bernstein-Ellis That's beautiful. You really highlighted that role, the role of the whānau. And you also identify, Felicity, some other key contributors to wellbeing, and then how those might really impact our clinical goal setting, and I know that's always such an important aspect of how we think as clinicians. You have to document because we're in a system, which we'll talk about. Maybe you can share some other factors that you identified. Felicity Bright Yeah, so I would be encouraging people to think about what are all the things that seem to support people's long term wellbeing? And those are things, like the relationships they hold within their family, but also within their social networks and within their work networks and so on, Thinking about the different emotions that people might be experiencing. Thinking about hope and what supports people to hold hope, and what do people hope for. Think about the connections that matter to people, the connections to people. The cultural things that matter for people's wellbeing. The connections to community activities and roles and so on. And think about the things that matter and are meaningful for individuals that usually fall outside our traditional SMART goals that we use in New Zealand, you know? Is it smart, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time bound? What is it? I would be saying our goal should be focusing on what makes a good life for this person. And I would be encouraging you, if you're a clinician, looking at the goals that you're setting for the person. Where is the good life in those goals? Is that up front and center and documented on the page that everyone can see it? That's something I learned through my goal setting research. That was my first research job, the importance of taking people's words, putting their words on a page, and keeping the words where everybody could see it. So where are the things that support wellbeing and that constitute a good life in our goal setting? Where are they in the interventions that we're doing? And I would be really encouraging people to reflect on how they are making the links explicit between the therapeutic tasks and the things that really matter to people. Because we know from the engagement work that when people can see the link between what they're doing in therapy and what matters to them in life, it is much more likely to be engaging and is much more likely to support them to persist, even when it's difficult, because they can understand this is why I'm doing this thing. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Right? Oh, that's beautiful. That really leads nicely into another 2024 article that you've put out focused on wellbeing. And that's The physical wellbeing is our top priority: Healthcare professionals' challenges in supporting psychosocial wellbeing and stroke services. That article examines what seems to be a mismatch between knowing as clinicians that wellbeing is important, right, and being able to specifically address it within our clinical context. So, we say that we want to, and we know it's important, but the ability to get there, it's quite challenging. I was wondering if you could highlight some of your findings and key recommendations. And I think one of those actually addresses the graduate curriculum. I think that is really going back to the beginning, right? So, please share some of the wonderful work from that article. Felicity Bright So the context for this work is, this is part of a bigger program of research I'm doing around wellbeing after stroke. And this isn't specific to people with aphasia, but we do have people with aphasia in the research. This research came from this issue-- we've got decades of literature that says that wellbeing is important. We've got a body of literature that says clinicians know wellbeing is important, but we are persistently not addressing wellbeing, and we've got decades of patient experience data that says this is an unmet need. So I was really interested in understanding, why have we got this persistent mismatch between what is known what matters and what is done, and so using an approach called institutional ethnography to try and get into the cultures and the structures that contribute to this, the rationale behind that is I didn't want to be creating solutions that were going to be completely unattainable in the healthcare context. And so I wanted to understand what's going on in the structure of the healthcare system, and how might we be able to work with that or push against that, to create different ways of thinking about how we work to deal with this persistent issue. So this project, this part of the research, we were looking at, why are clinicians not seeming to address wellbeing? And so we interviewed over 30 clinicians, I think, within this research for a whole range of healthcare disciplines. What came through really consistently was everybody wanted to support wellbeing. Everybody thought it was important, but there were a number of factors that made it difficult, and we traced as to why that was so. Firstly, we can look back to when the person first comes into the service. They come into the emergency department. There's often a code stroke that's called. It's a time of really busy early biomedical focus around investigating the stroke, doing assessments. The first couple of days are about intervening to prevent another stroke or to prevent complications. And dysphagia assessment is a classic in New Zealand. Dysphagia assessment is usually prioritized over communication assessment because it is seen to have particular risks and contribute to particular complications. And so we've got this really early biomedical focus as people come through the first few days. Then the focus shifts a little bit to assessments and treating impairment in function. And when we were interviewing clinicians, they were talking about wanting to give people the best chance of recovery, and that linked to ideas around neuroplasticity and the importance of early intervention for maximizing neuroplasticity and brain remodeling. There was a real focus on addressing the practicalities like toileting and dressing and what was needed to get people home. And there was a view often that emotions could wait. We need to do the practicalities first. We can do the other stuff later. This was a time of focusing on helping people survive, get through and get home, and it was in the context of really busy wards. You know, sitting and watching nurses work, they are flat out. They are understaffed, and they have very limited time to be doing these aspects of work. But all of this contributes in this wider healthcare system that in New Zealand, and I suspect internationally, is short staffed, underfunded. We've got more demand than we've got beds. There is a really strong focus on getting people home. Now that's not inherently bad. A lot of our people that we speak to want to be home. Home is a more healing environment for many people than being in hospital. But when the focus is on getting people home, and that is usually about, is the person physically safe to be home, what can happen is other forms of work and other impacts of stroke can be devalued or be forgotten. And what we could see is people were doing work to support wellbeing within this, but it was kind of a particular form of wellbeing work. They would acknowledge a person's emotions, if they came up through interactions. They would be responding to the emotional cues that people gave off that they were maybe feeling a bit uncertain or a bit upset. They talked about the importance of listening to the person, but that was often couched in a ‘I can listen for so long, but then I need to get on with my session', because the assessment, the treatment, the moving people forward wasn't important, and they would look to others to help. But the problem is, I would say this, this did a really good job of dealing with the tip of the iceberg, the emotions that were on the surface. But if we think back to what I've just said about what matters for wellbeing, relationships, connection, sense of self, hope, those things are not addressed. What we saw was that wellbeing was other to the core work of any individual discipline. That didn't work for anybody. Didn't work for our patients that we spoke to. It didn't work for our clinicians as well, because we could also see the moral injury and the burnout that comes when you can't offer the services that you know people are wanting and needing. And when we think about what do we do about that? Well, yeah, it's tricky, and I don't have any great answers, but training and education is one thing. So when we think about wellbeing as seen as other to the core business of the disciplines, we need to look at, what is it that we're teaching our students? What are we saying is core work of speech therapy or of physiotherapy or of nursing. I've got the privilege of chairing the accreditation body for speech therapy in New Zealand, and we are rewriting our accreditation framework at the moment that essentially dictates what programs need to teach. We now have a requirement that programs are teaching about psychosocial wellbeing, and that programs are assessing students on how they're addressing psychosocial wellbeing. We need to look at how pathways for care develop, and where is wellbeing within policies, processes, structures, documentation, Basically, it's nowhere. But we also need to look structurally, and we can talk a little bit more about structures and organizations and cultures, because I think what this work reflects is a wider issue around the cultures and the organization of care that can make it really challenging for clinicians to work in the ways that they do. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Oh my gosh, it's a beautiful, beautiful response. I think my favorite quote, and there were many in that article, but the one that said “people with stroke live with the impacts of a stroke system that is designed around biomedical short term care for a lifelong condition and deserve services that support them to thrive, not just survive.” I think it's what we need to bring back into the curriculum for our students to understand. And all of this ties into the importance of understanding how cultures and organizations, like you just said, of care, might impact the therapy we provide to our clients. Why do cultures and organizations of care matter? You're alluding to that. I think we've just started to reflect on that. Felicity Bright Yeah, I've often felt there's a real risk with the research that I do that we could end up pointing the finger at clinicians of not doing things as well as they could or as well as they should. But actually, we need to understand why is this? Why does it make sense for clinicians to prioritize dysphagia over communication? Why does it make sense to prioritize getting people home, over spending the time on addressing their wider wellbeing? And I've been really lucky to work with Deb Hersh and Stacey Attrill, we did a piece of work that looked at this in the context of how speech therapists enacted therapeutic relationships. And we started by delving into why do people work in the way that they do? We started to see the cultural elements. So the needs, for instance, your allegiances to colleagues, to be a good team player, to maintain your legitimacy. And particularly for speech therapists, who often have a slightly tenuous role in stroke teams. Physios and OTs are important, but speech therapists often have to kind of fight to kind of have their voices heard, and so that can lead to speechies behaving in particular ways. We can also see how cultures of safety impact on what people prioritize. So Abby Foster has done some beautiful work around the cultures of aphasia care and acute care, and highlighting that actually the priority for physical safety and managing dysphagia risk is privileged over the culture of or a need to think about what is the risk associated with communication and poor communication and people not having communication access. If we understand why people work as they do, and if we understand how the cultures and the structures work, then we can start to unpack them and think about what are the ways that we might be able to do things differently. You know, these cultural factors are very real, and none of them are inherently wrong, like it's not a bad thing that we're trying to prevent people getting aspiration pneumonia. That's really, really important, but we need to understand how these things shape practice and the unintended consequences that they might have for what is not valued and for what work isn't prioritized, and what outcomes don't actually seem to really matter in these contexts. And when we start to make these visible, then that opens up space to think about, how might we be able to do things differently, where we can maybe hold all of these things. And you know, in my work that I'm doing around wellbeing, that's the next phase of our work, is working with clinicians to think about, how might we be able to do things differently, so that it's not one or the other, it's not a dichotomy. But how do we create space for all of these things to be viewed as important and to be prioritized? Ellen Bernstein-Ellis You've started to dig into that already, because you have yet another 2024 article that you co-authored with Kayes, Soundy and Drown, Limited conversations about constrained futures: exploring clinician conversations about life after stroke in inpatient settings. And that examines how clinicians talk about the future with their clients. It analyzes 300 hours of observation of clinical interactions, along with 76 interviews with people with aphasia and 37 clinicians. I just want to say that's an astounding undertaking. So, as I read it, it felt like almost an extension of your 2013 and 2020 articles looking at hope, because you connected how what we say can impact how our clients see their future possibilities. Can you share some of the themes you constructed from all of that amazing data collection? I mean, I'm sorry, I thought 15 interviews were a lot, so then I saw this, and I'm like, oh my goodness, amazing. Felicity Bright It was a pretty massive piece of work, but it was a real privilege to be able to sit and just observe interactions. And I'm so grateful to our people with stroke, many of whom were like two or three days post stroke, and they had the stranger come along and sit there and observe them for 12 hours, but also to our clinicians, who were quite vulnerable in that process of having somebody observe and analyze what they were doing. But at the same time, I think that work is really valuable for looking at what is going on. What we could see is that the conversations that were being had tended to focus on quite a short term future, and we termed this theme constrained temporal horizons. When clinicians were talking about the future, the vast majority of those conversations were about the immediate future. For doctors and nurses--for nurses, it was often what needs to happen in this shift. For allied health and for doctors, it was what needs to happen before you discharge from our service into the next service. And for some allied health, it might be the first few days at home, but there was a view that talking about the longer term future beyond that should be done by other clinicians who might have more knowledge of what life could look like at that stage. We also found that the talk about quite a constrained future was in the context of actually very limited talk, in the first place. So when we think about communication access, for instance, we think, oh, people with aphasia aren't getting very good communication. Actually, lots of people with stroke are not getting very good communication. Again, thinking about cultural factors, but actually communication is not happening well in stroke units, or, I think within the wider healthcare system. You know, we've got a very task focused, medically focused situation. And so the conversations that were happening were on topics that were led by healthcare professionals, on the topics that they felt mattered-- the tasks they needed to do, the body structures and impairments. The goals that were set were about what needs to happen before somebody gets home. There was little talk about emotions. There was little talk about how you're feeling about what's going on, or what it might be like for you or for your family when you go home. And so this talk about the emotions and so on and future possibilities was left to patients and to families to raise. And instead, the conversations tended to focus on what the healthcare professionals saw as essential topics for the episode of care. We certainly did see some conversations about the future. So I don't want to be disparaging, and I also want to acknowledge the very partial nature of research. I did not see every single interaction. I know that a lot of these quite personal conversations often happen in things like the shower, when the nurses or the OTS are helping the person shower. That's one of the few private spaces on the ward. And so I want to acknowledge that my analysis is based on a limited data set, and it isn't based on all the conversations that happened, but certainly there was a trend towards limited conversations. We did see that clinicians would open some doors about the future. So they would talk about possible prognosis in the context of things like upper limb prognostic testing that is offered in some hospitals in New Zealand. We would see clinicians talk about what was meaningful to people, particularly in a context where the patient was struggling to engage, but often when the clinicians were talking about this wider future in this context, it was done to try and plant seeds about what the healthcare professional thought was realistic, and it was done to try and help the person engage in rehabilitation in the context of maybe struggling to engage at the best of times. So I think what we could see was that conversations were limited. They were limited conversations about short term, constrained futures that didn't necessarily set people up with hope for the future, with a sense of possibility, with a sense of even starting that process about what matters, to thinking about what matters to me, what do I want life to look like? Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Wow, and that really just circles us back to that concept of hope. Your work in hope has just been so meaningful to me. I've been really honored to be the guest lecturer speaking about aphasia to our counseling course that's taught by Dr Shubha Kashinath at Cal State, East Bay. And I've included, from the beginning, your work on hope. I just feel it's critical to give our students ways to understand and think about this construct and the role they can have in offering some hope building clinical interactions. I'd like to close this interview by having you discuss some of your first work that I had the honor to read, and some of the hope affirming strategies that you suggest in your 2020 article. Because I just think that's really a gift. Felicity Bright One of the things that really fascinated me in this work was how our people with aphasia in the research talked about how they look at their clinician and they are reading them to see, are you somebody who's going to give me hope or not? And if they didn't feel their clinician was going to support their hope or was going to help give them hope, or was going to disparage their hopes, they would shut down and they wouldn't share. And so I think, one of the things is to be reflecting on yourself. What are the messages that you are giving about how you are a safe person to talk to, about whether you are somebody that they can engage in these risky conversations about? I think there's a couple of things as well. We need to recognize that just because somebody says they hope for something doesn't mean that they expect it to happen. We all have unrealistic hopes and expectations. You know, psychologist colleagues talk to me about how actually having unrealistic hope is part of being psychologically adjusted, and why should that be different for people with stroke? Who are we to say that we hold the expertise. Now, that's not to say that there aren't challenges. So sometimes you might need to do a bit of a balance of, oh, is this something I need to engage in a conversation about? You know, an example is, if somebody is going to invest quite a bit of money in something that actually, there's no evidence to support and could potentially be problematic. There's a really good guideline I found from Christy Simpson, who's an ethicist, who talked about what are the positive effects that this hope has for people? What would be the impacts of taking it away, both positive, but also, what are the negative things that it would do? And so actually engaging in a bit of a risk analysis to think critically about what is holding this hope doing for somebody. Linked to that in the latest paper we did around recalibrating hope, it really highlighted to me the importance of trusting people to often recalibrate their own hopes. So I went back to my original participants from my 2013 research a couple of years later, and I looked at their experiences of hope over that time. And what we found was most of them recalibrated their hopes. They hoped for different things over that time, and they had done that as they engaged in different activities, as they tried things, as they considered their progress, as they rethought what mattered to them. And so that really highlighted, to me, the need to trust people, but it also highlighted the need to think about, how do we support a context that supports people to do that recalibration. Those who were more likely to recalibrate and hold both hope and realism together were people who had social networks, who were engaging in meaningful activities, and who had a sense of purpose and possibility. One of my participants didn't have that. They had lost their social connections. They had no activities in which they were engaging in what was meaningful, and their hope had shrunk. And so it talks to me again, those earlier conversations we've had about well being, thinking about what's meaningful, what supports wellbeing, that's exactly the same thing that supports hope. How are we supporting people's social wellbeing? How are we supporting their relational wellbeing? How are we helping them connect to what is meaningful and what is possible, not just to their impairments, and maybe what is not working so well. I think it's really important to be explicitly thinking about, what is it that helps people bring joy, have joy? What brings them peace in the present? And how can we help them have that sense that things are okay, even if they're not perfect, but also help them have that sense of looking to a future that's possible. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Okay, we only have a minute or two left, but I'm going to throw this last question out to you. Felicity, if you had to pick only one thing that we need to achieve urgently as a community of providers, of professionals, what would that one thing be? This is almost like your elevator pitch. You got 60 seconds here. So, so Felicity Bright So my one thing, in a long, complex sentence, is that speech and language therapists need to reprioritize communication and supporting people to live well after stroke and aphasia, and they need to consider how we model to our colleagues and to our patients and families, and how we support cultures of care that value relationships and relational work, that value and support communication, and that value and support wellbeing. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Oh my goodness, well said, Felicity. Thank you so much for the honor of having this interview today. I know it's going to be impactful to our listeners, and I want to thank our listeners as well. For references and resources mentioned in today's show, please see our show notes. They're available on our website@www.aphasiaaccess.org and there you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy, and if you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info@aphasia access.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations, I'm Ellen Bernstein-Ellis, and thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. Thank you, Felicity. Felicity Bright My pleasure. Thank you for having me. References and Resources AUT Centre for Person Centred Research: https://cpcr.aut.ac.nz/our-research Biel, M. (Host). (2016). An interview with Felicity Bright: The patient's engagement and experience with you, the speech pathologist (No. 2) [audio podcast episode). ANCDS. SoundCloud.https://soundcloud.com/ancds/ep-2-an-interview-with-felicity-bright-the-patients-engagement-and-experience?utm_source=www.ancds.org&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fancds%252Fep-2-an-interview-with-felicity-bright-the-patients-engagement-and-experience Bright, F. A., Ibell‐Roberts, C., Featherstone, K., Signal, N., Wilson, B. J., Collier, A., & Fu, V. (2024). ‘Physical well‐being is our top priority': Healthcare professionals' challenges in supporting psychosocial well‐being in stroke services. Health Expectations, 27(2), e14016. Bright, F. A., Ibell-Roberts, C., & Wilson, B. J. (2024). Psychosocial well-being after stroke in Aotearoa New Zealand: a qualitative metasynthesis. Disability and Rehabilitation, 46(10), 2000-2013. Bright, F. A., Kayes, N. M., McCann, C. M., & McPherson, K. M. (2013). Hope in people with aphasia. Aphasiology, 27(1), 41-58. Bright, F. A., McCann, C. M., & Kayes, N. M. (2020). Recalibrating hope: A longitudinal study of the experiences of people with aphasia after stroke. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 34(2), 428-435. Bright, F. A., Kayes, N. M., Soundy, A., & Drown, J. (2024). Limited conversations about constrained futures: exploring clinicians' conversations about life after stroke in inpatient settings. Brain Impairment, 25(1). Ellis-Hill, C., Payne, S., & Ward, C. (2008). Using stroke to explore the life thread model: an alternative approach to understanding rehabilitation following an acquired disability. Disability and rehabilitation, 30(2), 150-159. Foster, A., O'Halloran, R., Rose, M., & Worrall, L. (2016). “Communication is taking a back seat”: speech pathologists' perceptions of aphasia management in acute hospital settings. Aphasiology, 30(5), 585-608. Parr, S., Byng, S., & Gilpin, S. (1997). Talking about aphasia: Living with loss of language after stroke. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). Simpson, C. (2004). When hope makes us vulnerable: A discussion of patient-healthcare provider interactions in the context of hope. Bioethics, 18(5), 428-447

Is there a cure for musical anhedonia?

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2024 4:26

This week, Carl writes in to ask whether he can be cured of specific musical anhedonia. This is a condition whereby a person can hear and distinguish between different types of music and the emotion they convey, but doesn't feel moved in the same way most people do. James Tytko took on Carl's conundrum with the help of Malinda McPherson, Assistant Professor at Purdue University's Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

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Preventing Senior Moments with Dr. Stan Goldberg

Specifically for Seniors

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2024 27:58

We all get them - those momentary lapses when we can't recall someone's name, why we came into a room or where we left the car keys. We call them senior moments, but are these moments inevitable or limited to seniors? We'll learn more about these senior moments and how to work through them with our guest this week on Specifically for Seniors, Dr Stan Goldberg. Dr. Stan Goldberg is an expert in the areas of aging, human information processing, change, loss, and end-of-life issues. He is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University, and his writing has received 26 national and international awards. We'll be talking with Stan about his thoughts on Preventing Senior Moments and How to Stay Alert into Your 90s and Beyond - which is also the title of his latest book. Book: Preventing Senior Moments and How to Stay Alert into Your 90s and Beyond Web Site: https://stangoldbergwriter.com Questions, comments, suggestions for future guests: Https://www.specificallyforseniors.com/voicemail

language speech preventing seniors professor emeritus san francisco state university senior moments hearing sciences stan goldberg

Purdue Research Series | A Look Into Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences Innovations With Preeti Sivasankar

This Is Purdue

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2024 26:31

In this episode of “This Is Purdue,” we're talking to Preeti Sivasankar, Purdue University's vice president for research innovation and professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Societal transformation begins with research, and no one knows this better than Preeti. Since joining Purdue's faculty 19 years ago, she has contributed to making the department a leader in the field. Purdue is now home to the No. 2 speech-language pathology graduate program and No. 8 audiology graduate program in the country according to U.S. News & World Report. And as the newly appointed vice president for research innovation, she helps lead other Boilermaker researchers as their work continues to impact the world. In this second episode of our 2024 Purdue Research Series, you will: Learn more about Preeti's research in voice disorders, what causes them and how we can prevent vocal strain. Explore how Purdue's Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, part of the College of Health and Human Sciences, provides students and faculty with unique research opportunities and experiences. Discover how, as vice president of research innovation, Preeti's approach to interdisciplinary research at Purdue will take our students' and faculty's work to the next level. Find out about the mentorship that's shaping the next generation of researchers and making a significant impact in speech, language and hearing sciences. Hear her debunk common myths about saving our voices and describe what we can do to protect them. You don't want to miss this special episode with this persistent and boundary-pushing Boilermaker!

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LU Moment: Mary Wernig's journey as a Cardinal | S7 Ep. 26

LU Moment with Shelly Vitanza

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2024 16:57

This week on the LU Moment, we sit down with Lamar University Speech & Hearing Sciences junior, Mary Wernig. For updates on the latest news and events at Lamar University, visit lamar.edu/news.

cardinal lamar university hearing sciences

Ep 132: A Journey into Audiology

audiology speech language hearing sciences

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2024 16:11

What's the difference between speech pathology, hearing, and audiology? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Jennifer Bentley, a dedicated professor in the Speech Language and Hearing Sciences department at Sargent College. A passionate audiologist, Jennifer shares her love for audiology, reflecting on her career journey, the field's advancements in oral rehabilitation/habilitation, and offering invaluable advice to students aspiring to enter this rewarding profession.

Starting Early in Private Practice with Breeah Carey

Private Practice Success Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2024 31:23

Have you been thinking about starting a private practice early in your career? If so, this episode is for you! In this episode of Private Practice Success Stories, I sat down with Breeah Carey, a speech language pathologist with a pediatric private practice in New Jersey. She started her private practice at just 26 years old after getting the inspiration from other young private practitioners who had the flexibility and freedom she was striving for. After feeling stuck in a negative work environment, she decided to start her own practice. In this episode, Breeah and I discuss a major shift with the younger generation who is simply not willing to wait for the freedom, flexibility, and income they desire. Breeah S. Carey, M.S., CCC-SLP is a New Jersey native and the Director of B.E.S. As the daughter of an educator, Breeah was always interested in serving her community, similar to her mother. Breeah graduated from Purdue University and received her undergraduate degree in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, with minors in psychology and Spanish. As her passion grew, specifically around assisting individuals with speech, language, and cognitive impairments, she decided to further her education. She completed two years of comprehensive training in Purdue's Master of Science Speech-Language Pathology program; thus, receiving her master's degree at the end of her studies. Her areas of focus include pediatric language disorders, speech sound disorders, and bilingualism. In Today's Episode, We Discuss:The truth about what it takes to be successful as a private practice owner Breeah's non-traditional path to private practiceThe populations you can serve as a private practice ownerBreeah's secret sauce to getting referrals to her private practiceWhy so many SLPs and OTs are successful in private practiceThe key to pricing your services and sustaining a private practice The impact freedom has had on Breeah's life now that she's a private practice ownerHow to know if starting a private practice is really for you I hope you enjoyed this episode with Breeah! I love her advice to other young clinicians and why she thinks the younger generation is choosing private practice!Are you an early career SLP or OT who wants help to start your own private practice?If so, please visit www.IndependentClinician.com/Resources to learn about our free and paid resources!Whether you want to start a private practice or grow your existing private practice, I can help you get the freedom, flexibility, fulfillment, and financial abundance that you deserve. Visit my website www.independentclinician.com to learn more.Resources Mentioned: Visit Breeah's website: https://www.breezeeducare.com/Follow Breeah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beautybreeslp/Follow Breeah on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BreezeEducationalServices/Where We Can Connect: Follow the Podcast:

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Kelly Smith-Vernon Discusses Telesupervision

master ohio arts bachelor speech ohio state university vernon concordia university marshall university kelly smith educational administration teletherapy mtss communication disorders hearing sciences

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2024 29:00

Kelly Smith-Vernon is a speech language pathologist with Next Level Speech Therapy in a hybrid role as a provider and supervisor for SLPAs. Kelly resides in rural, southeast Ohio with her husband on the family farm. She enjoys the outdoors, traveling, and caring for animals in her free time. Kelly's education began with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Disorders from Marshall University. She furthered her studies at The Ohio State University, earning a Master of Arts in Speech and Hearing Sciences in 1998. She continued her education with Concordia University where she earned a Master of Arts in Educational Administration in 2023. Kelly has worked in a variety of settings including public schools, outpatient clinics, hospitals, home health, long-term care, and telepractice during her career; however, has spent much of her time serving public schools both in-person and via telepractice. She possesses an enduring passion to ensure students and families receive excellence in instruction.Her expertise lies in treating children with articulation, phonology, child language, and alternative/augmentative communication needs, as well as mentoring and supervision. Kelly is certified in LETRS and offers extensive experience in incorporating students' speech language needs into system-wide MTSS programming. NEXT LEVEL WEBSITE: https://nextlevelspeech.com/ KELLY'S EMAIL: KellyV@nextlevelspeech.com ___________________________ You can listen to this episode wherever you stream podcasts and at www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com/telepractice-today-podcast If you would like to be a guest on Telepractice Today or have a guest recommendation, please contact Todd Houston at todd@3cdigitalmedianetwork.com.

The transformative power of mentoring: A conversation with Robin Pollens

The Pediatric Speech Sister Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2024 33:44

Dr. Janet Patterson: Welcome to this Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast, a series of conversations about aphasia, the LPAA model, and aphasia programs that follow this model. My name is Janet Patterson. I am a Research Speech-Language Pathologist at the VA Northern California Healthcare System in Martinez, California, and a member of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their efforts in engaging with persons with aphasia and their families through a variety of educational materials and resources. I am the host for our episode that will feature Robin Pollens, in which you will hear about the transformative power of mentoring. These Show Notes accompany the conversation with Robin but are not a verbatim transcript. In this episode you will hear about: 1. the presentation of the Aphasia Access, Sandra O. Glista Excellence in Mentoring award to Robin Pollens, 2. stories about mentoring from Robin's career as a speech-language pathologist, and 3. the power of a mentoring relationship to affect the relationship with people whom you mentor, from whom you receive mentoring, and with whom you share mentoring opportunities. I am delighted to be speaking with my dear friend and longtime LPAA colleague, Robin Pollens. Robin is an ASHA certified speech language pathologist and held the positions of adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Western Michigan University, and clinical supervisor and coordinator in the Aphasia Communication Enhancement program. She also provided clinical speech-language pathology services through home health, and skilled nursing outpatient clinics. In addition to her focus on LPAA, Robin is passionate about graduate education in speech-language pathology, palliative care, interprofessional collaboration and ethics, and has written and lectured nationally and internationally on these topics. In 2023 Robin was awarded the Sandra O. Glista Excellence in Mentoring award from Aphasia Access. 2023 marks the inaugural award given to both Robin and Leora Cherney from the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago. The “Sandy” is awarded by Aphasia Access and recognizes an exceptional mentor who has demonstrated unwavering commitment, unparalleled guidance, and profound impact on the professional and personal development of others working in the aphasia community. The award is named in honor of Sandy Glista, one of the founders of Aphasia Access, and is a testament to her enduring legacy, and a reminder of the transformative power of mentorship. Welcome Robin, to this edition of Aphasia Access conversations. Ms. Robin Pollens: Janet, thank you. Thank you so much for all that intro, and it's nice to be here to talk with you today. I want to also right now, thank Aphasia Access for this honor. It was especially meaningful, towards the end of my career, to receive a mentorship award and to hope there's something that I did, or I said, or I wrote over the years that was meaningful to somebody else. I also appreciate that I'm sharing this inaugural award with a wonderful friend, Leora Cherney, and that this award is named for my close friend and collaborative partner, Sandra Glista. It's a real honor to have received it and an honor to talk with you today, Janet. Janet: The feeling is mutual about talking with you, Robin, and the honor is certainly well deserved. Robin, as I mentioned earlier, you were honored with the Sandra O. Glista Excellence in Mentoring award. This award recognizes your commitment to mentoring individuals who are part of the aphasia community, including clinicians, researchers, persons with aphasia, and their care partners, students and others. Through Sandy Glista and this award, we are reminded of the transformative power of mentoring. Robin, how do you envision the value of mentoring to individuals and to the Aphasia community? Robin: When I received this award, it set me on the road to reminiscence. I remember being in, I think, undergrad, studying Speech and Hearing Sciences and I had not yet done any clinical work. I had the opportunity to sit and observe a grad student doing an aphasia assessment with a patient. I was sitting behind this two-way mirror and I'm watching, and my mind is going, “okay, she holds up this card; and then she writes something down; and then she has someone point.” That's what my mind was doing. Sitting behind the two-way mirror with me happened to be a visiting professor from Australia named Anne. She turned to me and said, “Look at all of that empathy”. And I went, in my mind, “Empathy, what does that have to do with it?” Then I looked through the mirror, and I saw that this grad student was talking softly and looking kindly in her eyes, and kind of patting the client when she got frustrated. I thought, “Oh, I guess that's part of this.” So I'm thankful for her (Anne) and I feel like she was my first mentor. She only said one sentence to me, but it set me on a path for what it means to be an SLP. I know that recently, like in the last five years, there's been more discussion in our field about the importance of counseling, and mental health and people with aphasia. When I would be watching a grad student doing therapy, and I'm supervising, sometimes I would see them having what I would call a counseling moment. I would make sure to let them know later, saying perhaps, “I saw when the patient was frustrated, you stopped the task and you talked with them kindly. They told you about some things that were happening, and you gave an empathic comment.” This is the way that I think about mentoring, that it's a pathway to learning or growth that comes out of your own experience, and then it goes on to others and recreates. I can go on and on with stories. Janet: Please do tell stories, Robin, because I'm fascinated by stories. I have another question though, Robin, as you continue to tell me your stories, you've led right into the question that's on my mind. People may think of mentoring as one way, such as the experience that you had sitting behind the mirror and watching the graduate student. I see mentoring as an interactive relationship that goes multiple ways. I would love to hear more of your stories and learn about your thoughts about interactive mentorship. Does that make sense to you? Robin: Yes, I do like that framework that you just said, Janet. And when I knew I was going to be doing this discussion with you today, of course, I went online, and I looked up mentoring to see what kind of definitions I might find. I actually found a website that I liked; it was Art of Mentoring. The definition for mentor they used was a coach, a connector, or even a challenger to help their mentees reach their full potential. The mentee will lead the relationship, inviting the mentor into their own inner dialogue to assist in working through, and I really liked that. I think that's ideally how the relationship can work. So, for example, when I was supervising the students in the ACE program, when it got to be in the middle of the semester, we would have a midterm conference and I would always say, “Tell me about your goals for yourself for the rest of this semester, how would you like me to help you?” The answers were so varied, there were some people that were very focused on the clinical learning tasks, they might say something like, I'm having trouble being in the conversation and keeping track of data, or this patient's talking so much, I don't know how to navigate the session to get everyone involved. So, there were clinical skills. Whereas there were other people that would say something like, I get so anxious before the session, I'm so nervous, it takes me a while after I met it to really be able to focus on what's happening. Those are two very different kinds of goals, and I wouldn't have known as their supervisor and mentor for that situation if I hadn't asked, and if they hadn't, let me know. So, I do think that that's important. I also think sometimes we have to seek out our own mentors; that's part of the relationship. In the beginning of my career when I was in my clinical fellowship year, I didn't have one of these strong clinical fellowship, amazing experiences that some people did, I was in a public school, and I had someone who was my supervisor. During that time, I was able to get a position in a different city, working in the hospitals, and another supervisor agreed to keep following me as the supervisor. In the hospital, I had some new patients that had had injuries, and I wasn't sure what to do. My supervisor didn't know anything about that, and I ended up going to a conference in Braintree, Massachusetts, and they were talking about this new thing called Rancho Los Amigos Scale, and I learned about it and brought it back. Sometimes throughout our careers, I think you need to actively seek out a mentor. I think I remember that Aphasia Access started a program where if you wanted to be a mentor, or you have a mentor, you can let them know; I think that's great, because there's always things that go on as your career continues that you may want to get some guidance for. Janet: What I'm hearing you say, Robin, if I can paraphrase your words, is as an individual, a good thing is for one to be open to mentoring opportunities, whether you provide them or acknowledge them, when you see a student or a colleague performing in an empathetic manner, or for your own self seeking out someone to give you assistance. The mentoring could be a large role, such as in a CFY, or a lengthy one such as a two- or three-year relationship, or it could be a very short-term kind of mentorship. This seems to me to be what you're saying, make yourself open to learning and interacting with all sorts of people, because they can have an influence on your life, and presumably, you on theirs as well. Robin: You summarized that great Janet. Yes, and I know that when I was working in home care quite a long time ago, I remember feeling in awe of the family members, the amount of care and the total concern, and they modified their life to care for their loved one. All of a sudden, I remember that feeling, and then fast forward two decades later, when some of my family members had illness, and I was in that role. I was drawing upon what I learned from them, which in turn, I share with our families of the people with aphasia when they're having medical situations. So hopefully, we're just all doing this for each other, throughout our lives. Janet: What's the phrase “together, we're more powerful”, that's not it exactly, but our thinking together and the little pieces of information about mentorship or actions about mentorship, that you can recall from 15 or 20 years ago, that can help you today, are just as important as the word someone says to you this afternoon, about how you can be a better clinician, or you can give guidance to someone who is seeking it from you. Exactly. Robin, in your position at Western Michigan University, I know you have mentored numerous students, and we could probably talk for months or years about wonderful stories. Some of them, most of them, I'm sure are successful, but there probably were a few that were less successful mentorship relationships. I know that you've mentored students, what I'm interested in learning from you is have you also mentored persons with aphasia or their care partners? Robin: Yes, and I think there are different ways to mentor somebody with aphasia. I think the piece of it I'm going to pick up on has to do with helping them express their identity, helping them to reach their level. And again, I think for me, the roots of it came actually long before I knew about Life Participation Approach to Aphasia, it wasn't really articulated yet. I remember working in home care with a woman in her 40s. She had her stroke, and she had severe aphasia. But also, all of a sudden, she could no longer work as a crossing guard. That was her work, as a crossing guard for the elementary school. She also was no longer part of her caring circle at church, she was the one that greeted people, and sent get-well cards. I think that one really struck me because I was also on the caring circle at my temple. So, we ended up in therapy focusing on reading and writing, but in the context of being able to write sympathy or get-well cards. She made a dictionary of phrases you could write and things like that. So, fast forward to being in the ACE program, which was created by myself and Sandra Glista, to be a place where goals were addressed, not only the impairment level, but also the participation level, and there's certainly countless examples there I can think of, even from way back in the beginning, because it's in the article that we wrote. There was an organization in our city called Senior Corps, and it's actually in many states still. We trained some of the volunteers to communicate with people with aphasia, and then matched them with some of our people with something they wanted to do. So, one of the people ended up being, with his conversation partner, part of a bowling league, an accessible bowling league. He was young, he'd always been in sports, and he was just sitting home so that was his identity. Another person was matched with a woman who ended up going into a first-grade art class in elementary school once a week and helping out in that art program with her conversation partner. So, these were things that we started saying, we're working on communication, but we're also in some way guiding them towards a meaningful and participatory life. So that's one way, I hope that I've been a mentor for some people with aphasia. Janet: I bet you have been a mentor for a lot of people with aphasia, because I can just visualize you thinking, and tapping into all the information from your former mentors, as you try to find ways to help an individual with aphasia, and his or her care partner or friend, take that step to being able to do whatever it is that they'd like to do, as well as they can possibly do it. I'm glad that you've had all these mentoring opportunities, and I think you're a leader in this field. Robin: Thank you, Janet. I'd also say I think a way to be a mentor with someone with aphasia is also just having an authentic relationship with them, when their communication changes so much and people don't know how to communicate with them, and they don't know how to communicate with others. Being someone that they know they can talk with, they can relate with and laugh with, I think that in and of itself is a valuable way for interacting with somebody who has a sudden change in their communication. Janet: You're talking about accepting someone for who they are, meeting them where they are, and together, you have a relationship that is built on trust, so that that individual would be more willing to accept from you, ideas that you suggest. They may be wacky ideas at the moment, but they certainly work in the long run. That relationship helps you both accept information from each other. I'm really curious, you've told us several stories about mentoring, and we'd love to hear many, many more. Can you think of a favorite mentoring experience you've had in some part of your career? Tell us one about one of those. Robin: Sure, I'll name the one that I just got to go through. That was mentoring the next coordinator of the Aphasia communication Enhancement Program, which is Alison Mezcal. I had the great pleasure to stay for a semester while she was there, and we were able to do all of the coordinating. I already knew that she was a great clinician, she already knew the ACE program, she had been our student 10 years before. But the coordination piece, which is scheduling, and contacting people and planning, and all that would be new. So, we got to do it together over the semester and that was so satisfying to be able to do that. I also literally cleaned out the office and all the files and all the things so that it was ready for the next person. I know many people don't get to leave their position with the opportunity to do that, to directly mentor the next person, and it was a great pleasure. Janet, on the mentoring website, they talked about their logo, and it was two geese flying in, here's what they said, “The geese at the front of the flock improve the aerodynamics to make it easier for the followers to fly; the geese at the back honk to encourage the front geese to keep pushing forward.” And they are constantly shifting position, meaning the mentor could be leading from behind or in front, and sometimes just flying alongside. And that's what I had the opportunity to do with Allison. So that was a great pleasure. Janet: That was a great story, Robin. I just imagine the warmth it brought to your heart as you watch this living thing that you and Sandy created many years ago, move on to the next generation. But you know, I thought about something else, too, that this is part of, I think, what might be thoughts that a mentor has to consider. So, you've invested a lot in your ACE program, quite a bit over the years, and your heart and soul are in that, and you have mentored the next generation beautifully. But now you have to step aside. The next generation may have different ideas or may take it in a slightly different way, or may do things that you never even thought about. So, part of what a mentor has to do I would imagine, is also take a deep breath and know that you've done the best job you can. But then step aside and maybe your job now is to be at the back of that flock of geese and keep honking as the program moves forward under a new leader and a new director. Robin: Excellent. Yes, and that's very fun. I have great confidence and hope, and in a couple of weeks Alison and I are meeting for coffee, and I want to sit back and just hear all about the things that she's creating. Janet: That's wonderful. You are indeed a wonderful mentor, Robin, you've been a great mentor to me over the years, sometimes you knew it, sometimes you didn't, as a result of the conversations we've had, and through the different projects that we've done over the years. Let me turn to a slightly different topic now. We've mentioned this a couple of times already, that for many years you worked with Sandy Glista, who is a dear friend to both of us. I believe that being honored through this award, receiving the “Sandy”, it must bring warm thoughts of your days working together. Please tell our listeners about how Sandy's friendship and collegiality have influenced you during your career. Robin: I would say in the beginning, which would be the late 1990s, I'd say Sandy initially was a mentor, the kind of mentor that many people spoke about. In this regard, she was a connector, she connected people together. Well, she connected me to you, Janet, when you and myself and Ellen and Glenn did a project years ago on Cybersafety for people with aphasia. I was doing homecare and Sandy was working on a project with keeping elders communicating. She invited me to be involved in this project and start having some Western students intern with me. Then she invited me to do a presentation on a topic she was starting out investigating, interprofessional education, which was a new thing. We were in a college, and we had OT and social work and all the different disciplines together. They did a presentation, I brought in my team, my home care, OT PT, social work team, and we proudly presented a case. It was after that, that she was going to be going on sabbatical and she asked me if I would take her place in working with people with aphasia at Western, and that's when I began actually working at Western, in 2002. Once she came back, we started talking, and creating and planning this new version of an aphasia program and for a couple of decades, we were collaborative partners. We would add to each other, fit to each other, enjoy being together, and have a wonderful creative experience, creating these ideas that we had and seeing them happen. If we did anything such as write something or present something, it was always Sandy Glista and Robin Pollens, or Robin Pollens and Sandy Glista, whether they were even present or not, because the ideas germinated from both of us. So, if you ever have the opportunity to have a work relationship like that, it's a real gift. Janet: Our listeners can hear, I hope, the joy in your voice, as you're talking about that relationship you had with Sandy. I know that was a very special relationship for the two of you. I can see because I'm looking at your face right now, I can see the joy in your face. Recalling the close times and close work that you and Sandy had together, I'm sure that there were some disagreements or seeing things from different perspectives, but your last statement saying that it was a wonderful working relationship and you you'd like to see everyone have that kind of close, creative relationship, is admirable. So, thank you for that insight. Robin. I'm also wondering who were some of the mentors that you and Sandy drew upon? Robin: When Sandy went on sabbatical, she visited national and international aphasia centers, and she brought back the inspiration and the sense of community that she experienced there. I was reading the World Health Organization ICF with its impairment, activity, and participation parameters, and I could envision how we could use this concept to create goals for clients, and to create participation groups where clients could work on their impairment-based goals in the context of an activity of choice. Sandy and I studied relationship centered care, which came out of the Fetzer Institute here in Kalamazoo, and we envisioned a program where family members or care partners were part of the mission of a program. Finally, in our collaboration, we created a sequential way to educate the students through the semester to be able to provide this type of SLP treatment. On the first page of the article we published in 2007, you'll see a long list of people who inspired us. Those were ACE program mentors and as ACE continued, Elizabeth Nadler, Marie Koss-Ryan and Suma Devanga added their creativity supervisors. And I would add that once Aphasia Access was formed, there were many people in Aphasia Access, who became our collaborative mentors. So, thank you to everyone. Janet: Robin, you said something about interprofessional education and interprofessional practice, and it kind of got lost in a sentence, and I'd like to circle back to that and acknowledge that you and Sandy were visionaries in this area. Nobody else was talking about interprofessional practice, or publishing about it, or making it happen. You and Sandy were at the forefront of that. I remember those papers that you wrote, talking about the value that each one of the rehab professionals could bring to the treatment of the patient and how they we can all reinforce the goals for the patient, the various goals. So, we all owe you a debt of thanks for that, as well. Robin: I didn't realize that was that different. I just realized that we had the opportunity since we were at Western and there were the other professionals there, that each semester, we ended up creatively finding ways to coordinate with OT, or bring in a social worker or whatever it was. I have enjoyed watching the growth of this area of interprofessional over the last years and seeing how it's appreciated. Janet: I think it's very important. A previous Aphasia Access Podcast, #84, was with Mary Purdy, who talked about interprofessional collaboration and related a specific story where she and a physical therapist work together to achieve the particular goal of one of their clients. Another podcast, #78, with Michelle Gravier, Albert Mendoza, and Jennifer Sherwood described an interprofessional exercise program. I'm so glad that there is a greater appreciation for interprofessional education and interprofessional practice these days. So, Robin, as we bring this conversation to a close with thoughts, or as I like to call them Monday Morning Practices, do you have ideas that you could share with our listeners, things that they might either think about in the long term, or that they might do on Monday morning when they see their clients? Robin: Well, I almost feel teary as I'm answering this, but I'm going to work through this teariness. I'm thinking about beginnings. And I'm thinking about endings. And so, I'm thinking about making sure that in the beginning, if someone's in the hospital and has new stroke or new aphasia, whatever it is, that you are giving them hope, as described as important in the article way back by Avent, Glista and others, and I can't talk without giving a story, Janet. I'm remembering in homecare, seeing a new patient with severe aphasia, not much talking. The wife left the room while I was in the session, and I noticed a deer's head on the wall. So, I took out a piece of paper and I wrote down some written word choices, you know, baking, gardening, hunting, whatever. I said, “Tell me, I want to learn about you.” And he pointed to hunting, so we ended up having the whole conversation using supportive communication strategies and written words. At the end of the almost hour, his wife came in the room, and I said to her, “Oh, I just was hearing about the time that he and his brothers went up hunting up by Lake Michigan, and they had that rainstorm, and then the roof was leaking.” She looked at me and said, “How did he tell you that?” So, I took out the piece of paper, and I showed her our conversation, basically, with words and drawings. He had already gone through acute care, and inpatient rehab so I said to her, “Didn't anybody show you this along the way?” And she said, “No.” So that's one of the messages that I often like to express - the importance in the beginning of giving the family a method to be able to communicate because that's a way of giving hope. I can also quote another colleague of mine, Marie Koss-Ryan, who did some acute care pretty recently: same thing - she went in the room, new stroke, new severe aphasia. He was trying to read his menu to order breakfast and couldn't do it. So, she took out her iPad, pulled up a page of juices, and said,” What kind of juice do you like?” and he pointed to tomato juice. A little while later the tray came and then his wife came for the day visit and she saw the tomato juice, and she burst into tears? Marie asked what was wrong, and she said, “How did somebody know he drinks tomato juice every morning for breakfast.” She took out her iPad and showed her how you can pull up pictures. To me that's giving hope through a way to communicate. So that's the piece from the beginning. And I can't help but mention just briefly, to also remember if you are working in palliative care and end of life care, to also show up as a speech-language pathologist that can help people to be able to communicate as best as they can, even if it is at the end of their life. Janet: Those are, are very important points, I think, to start us off to remember the power of communication. And then also to know that there are lots of messages people wish to convey towards the end of their lives. How can we help them convey those messages? Robin, this has been an amazing conversation. And I know that you and I will have many more opportunities to talk to each other. I just wish we had many more days right now to listen to the stories and share the thinking and the insights and the bits of mentorship we have received from each other and from people in our clinical worlds. So, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I am proud to call you my friend and my colleague, and again, congratulations on receiving the Sandra O. Glista Excellence in Mentoring award. I know Robin, that when I asked you to be interviewed for this podcast, you were initially reluctant, as is your style. I'm so glad that you finally agreed because the messages that I'm hearing in our chat today, they're far beyond you and me. They're about the power, the transformative power, of mentoring, no matter who you are, or who you mentor. So, I thank you, and on behalf of Aphasia Access, I want you to know how humbled I am by your long-standing commitment to mentoring. I believe that even though you are retired from Western Michigan University, you have many future mentees that will also be humbled by your long-standing commitment to aphasia, to people with aphasia, to their care partners, and to mentoring. Robin: Thank you, Janet. Thank you very much. And I guess I will say this ended up being a gift that you gave me to be able to do this. I mean, we should all do it for each other to give them a chance to reminisce and tell their story and get perspective and life. So, thank you. Janet: You are more than welcome, Robin. I would also like to thank our listeners for supporting Aphasia Access Conversations by listening to our podcasts. For references and resources mentioned in today's show please see our Show Notes. They are available on our website, www.aphasiaaccess.org. There, you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, please email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations, and again thanking you Robin Pollens, I am Janet Patterson and I thank you all for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. To engage in further conversation about mentoring, Robin can be reached at robinpollensslp@gmail.com Reference List APPENDIX B: Rancho Los Amigos Scale-Revised. (2011). Continuum (Minneapolis, Minn.), 17(3 Neurorehabilitation), 646–648. https://doi.org/10.1212/01.CON.0000399079.30556.03 Avent, J., Glista, S., Wallace, S., Jackson, J., Nishioka, J., & Yip, W. (2005). Family information needs about aphasia. Aphasiology, 19(3–5), 365–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030444000813 Glista, S.O. & Pollens, R.D. (2007). Educating clinicians for meaningful, relevant, and purposeful aphasia group therapy. Topics in Language Disorders 27(4), 351-371. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.TLD.0000299889.62358.6f Pollens R. (2003). Home care. Hom Healthcare Nurse, 21(5), 348. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004045-200305000-00015 Pollens, R.D. (2020). Facilitating client ability to communicate in palliative end-of-life care: Impact of speech–language pathologists. Topics in Language Disorders 40(3), 264-277. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000220 URL The Art of Mentoring https://artofmentoring.net/what-is-mentoring/ Aphasia Communication Enhancement Program, Western Michigan University https://wmich.edu/unifiedclinics/vanriper/aphasia Fetzer Institute https://fetzer.org/ Aphasia Access Podcast Conversation #84 Interprofessional Practice and Interprofessional Education: In Conversation with Mary Purdy https://aphasiaaccess.libsyn.com/interprofessional-practice-and-interprofessional-education-in-conversation-with-mary-purdy Aphasia Access Podcast Conversation #78 A Llama, a Resistance Band, and Neil Diamond Walk Into a Bar - An Interprofessional Exercise Program for Individuals with Aphasia: A Conversation with Michelle Gravier, Albert Mendoza, and Jennifer Sherwood https://aphasiaaccess.libsyn.com/a-llama-a-resistance-band-and-neil-diamond-walk-into-a-bar-an-interprofessional-exercise-program-for-individuals-with-aphasia-a-conversation-with-michelle-gravier-albert-mendoza-and-jennifer-sherwood

Ep. 58 - The Pediatric Speech Sister Show is Back! A New Era of Cultural Responsiveness

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2024 9:12 Transcription Available

PSS Show is Back!! We've been out for a hiatus as we zoned in on Spring 2024 duties. We're thankful to have you back for another ERA. Tune in as we discuss: What to expect from this new era (we decided to keep our show 1 season!)Where we've been and what we've been up to Why we're happy to be backThis show is produced by the Pediatric Speech Sister Show Network on Youtube. You can watch LIVE replays HERE. This episode is sponsored by Liricare, LLC, an online community for speech language pathologists and special educators. You can sign up for free at liricare.com.Culturally Responsive Practices in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, 2nd Edition (Hyter & Salas-Provance, 2023): _________________________________________________MORE FROM PEDIATRIC SPEECH SISTERFollow me on Instagram! http://instagram.com/pediatricspeechsister Check out the PSS Gift Shop: https://pedspeechsister.etsy.com Pediatric Speech Sister Show Podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pediatric-speech-sister-show/id1659114388 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Uqf5xU9edqc4W1VkhfZV9 Get your “5 Ways to Support BIPOC Children in Clinical and Education Settings” FREE Poster Here: http://tinyurl.com/supportBIPOCkids"Introduction to Cultural Competemility in Speech Pathology" eBook Pre-Sell: https://tinyurl.com/culturalcompetemilityGET HERE: CULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS GLOSSARY: Start challenging your implicit biases with the “Empowering Inclusivity: Culturally Responsive Glossary with Implicit Bias Self-Reflection, 2LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and Disability TermsGet 10% OFF USING CODE PSS10 TODAY!FOR ASPIRING SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGISTSAre you an SLP2Be? Checkout Praxis Speech Sister on Instagram:http://instagram.com/praxisspeechsister Listen to the Praxis Speech Sister Podcast: tinyurl.com/praxisspeechsistermedia! Preparing for the SLP Praxis Exam? Get your FREE Praxis Prep Guide Here: https://mailchi.mp/378fe4c47030/studyprep

Ep 125: Empowering Voices

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2024 17:08

How can health practitioners best support individuals with a stutter? Join as as we speak with Caroline Brinkert– a speech-language pathologist, a fellow Terrier, director of BU's Center for Stuttering Therapy, and clinical faculty of the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences.

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E50: Career Pathways in Speech & Hearing Sciences at Lamar University

Southeast Texas Works!

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2024 29:07

Join Dr. Johanna Boult, Department Chair, and Chelsea Lyles, Director of SLP Clinical Services in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Lamar University, as they discuss the diverse career opportunities available in speech-language pathology and audiology. Gain valuable insights into the training programs offered and learn how they can prepare you for a rewarding career in speech and hearing sciences. Whether you're considering these professions or seeking to advance your current career, this podcast provides essential guidance for navigating the field with confidence. For more information visit https://www.lamar.edu/fine-arts-communication/speech-and-hearing-sciences/

A Conversation with Erin Thompson, of the Children's Cochlear Implant Center at UNC-Chapel Hill!

The Listening Brain

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2024 35:57

Erin Thompson, M.S., CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert AVT has been working with the Children's Cochlear Implant Center at UNC since July 2004. She earned her Bachelors from Appalachian State University and her Master's in Speech and Hearing Sciences from UNC-Chapel Hill. She completed her clinical fellowship year with Pediatric Speech and Language Services out of Greensboro and became a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist in 2009. Erin conducts Listening and Spoken Language parent participation sessions, speech and language diagnostics for children who are deaf and hard of hearing, as well as co-treat sessions with families and audiologists. A passion has been mentoring students and professionals across NC, the US and abroad. Erin has been a member of the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss and has traveled to Vietnam on three occasions, and Mongolia on one occasion to help provide mentoring and training abroad. She also spent time coaching a team of Speech-Language Therapists in Auckland, New Zealand. Erinexpanded her interests in 2019 to 2023 to include the role of Family Care Coordinator for The Children's Cochlear Implant Center at UNC. She helped manage, facilitate and coordinate cochlear implant consultation referrals, supporting all families going through the CI consult process at UNC. https://www.med.unc.edu/earandhearing/ ____________________________ You can listen to this episode wherever you stream podcasts and at www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com/the-listening-brain-podcast

197: The One About Hiring and Retention in Private Practice with Tracy Bond

Speechie Side Up

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2024 30:16

In this episode, I am joined by Tracy Bond. Tracy is an SLP and CEO, as well as, a wife, mom of 3 girls and grandmother ("Mam") to a 7 year old granddaughter. She received her undergraduate degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences from the University of South Alabama and her graduate degree in SLP from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She also obtained her Ed.S in Instructional Technology from the University of West Georgia. Tracy has been an SLP since 1993. She has three pediatric multidisciplinary clinics (ST, PT, and OT for ages 0 - 16) and opened her first private practice in December 2019 with 4 staff, her second in 6/21, and her third in 6/22. Her clinics currently see around 900 visits per week company wide. They currently have 55 employees. Tracy has aspirations to open two more clinics in 2024. She has had the ability to help so many children and families and wants to continue to help more daily. The SpOT Clinic has a clear vision and strong core values which are instilled in all team members. Visit Speechie Side Up to learn more about this episode.

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Ep 123: Using Your Voice – A Professor's Perspective

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2024 15:45

How might you become involved in clinical experience? Today's episode features Rachael Kammer, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at BU who has a special interest in evaluation and treatment of voice and swallowing in people with Parkinson's Disease.

How a SLU professor honors his family's civil rights legacy

St. Louis on the Air

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2024 20:35

Dr. Travis Threats is a professor and chair of St. Louis University's Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. He's also the grandson of Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter, parents who dared to force Mississippi to recognize the injustice of the state's “freedom of choice” in 1965 — one year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He shares how his grandparents' fight inspires his work today including his efforts to diversify the field of speech pathology.

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Episode #114: Creating Equitable Aphasia Services with Dr. Teresa Gray

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2024 26:26

Interviewer info Lyssa Rome is a speech-language pathologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, where she facilitates groups for people with aphasia and their care partners. She owns an LPAA-focused private practice and specializes in working with people with aphasia, dysarthria, and other neurogenic conditions. She has worked in acute hospital, skilled nursing, and continuum of care settings. Prior to becoming an SLP, Lyssa was a public radio journalist, editor, and podcast producer. In this episode, Lyssa Rome interviews Teresa Gray about creating equitable services for people with aphasia who are bilingual, non-English speaking, and historically marginalized groups. Guest info Dr. Teresa Gray is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University, where she directors the Gray Matter Lab. Teresa's research aims to improve aphasia health care outcomes for historically marginalized populations. Her research interests include bilingual aphasia, the mechanisms of language control in aphasia, and the role of language rehabilitation and its short-term and long-term effects on functional communication. Her team is working to develop evidence-based treatment methods for non-English speaking persons with aphasia, as well as bilingual persons with aphasia. In addition, the Gray Matter Lab hosts identity-based conversation clubs. The goal of these groups is to increase quality of life for the participants, and the lab is starting to examine why these groups are so meaningful to the participants. Listener Take-aways In today's episode you will: Understand why careful listening is important when working with bilingual and non-English-speaking people with aphasia and their families. Describe how speech-language pathologists can tailor their treatment to meet the needs of bilingual people with aphasia. Learn about identity-based aphasia groups. Edited transcript Lyssa Rome Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Lyssa Rome. I'm a speech language pathologist on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, and I see clients with aphasia and other neurogenic communication conditions in my LPAA-focused private practice. I'm also a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Dr. Teresa Gray, who was selected as a 2023 Tavistock trust for aphasia Distinguished Scholar, USA and Canada. In this episode, we'll be discussing Dr. Gray's research on aphasia treatment for bilingual and non-English speakers with aphasia, as well as identity-based aphasia conversation groups. Dr. Teresa Gray is an associate professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University, where she directs the Gray Matter Lab. Teresa's research aims to improve aphasia health care outcomes for historically marginalized populations. Her research interests include bilingual aphasia, the mechanisms of language control and aphasia, and the role of language rehabilitation and its short-term and long-term effects on functional communication. Her team is working to develop evidence-based treatment methods for non-English-speaking persons with aphasia, as well as bilingual persons with aphasia. In addition, the Gray Matter lab hosts identity-based conversation clubs. The goal of these groups is to increase quality of life for the participants. The lab is starting to examine why these groups are so meaningful to the participants. Theresa Gray, welcome to the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. I'm really glad to be talking with you. Teresa Gray Thanks so much, Lyssa. It's great to be here today. Lyssa Rome So I wanted to start by asking you what led you to study bilingualism and aphasia? Teresa Gray Sure, that's a great question. So, you know, really it was about curiosity. And so when, when I finished my master's in speech language pathology, I was working in Los Angeles at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. And I was working alongside a phenomenal group of speech language pathologists and a rehabilitation team, and it was just a wonderful experience. And a lot of our patients were bilingual. Some people were monolingual, non-English speakers. And it was just a situation where I was learning more and more about how to treat this population that may not speak English, even though a lot of our aphasia materials are based on English speakers. And in addition to that, I was curious to know more how does language present after stroke? If someone is a simultaneous bilingual versus a sequential bilingual, does that affect life after stroke? What about proficiency? What about language dominance? What about age of acquisition, all of these issues that go into language presentation—I was very curious about, and there wasn't a lot of research out there. And so, of course, as SLPs, we read the literature, and we really want to know, what is best practice. So when I decided to go back for my PhD, I decided I wanted to go study with Swathi Kiran, who is a leader in the field working with bilingual adults with aphasia. And so I had that opportunity. And I moved from Los Angeles to Boston to go study with Swathi. That's when I really dove into learning more about cognitive control and what that looks like as far as like language control, and how that interacts with cognitive control and how that's represented in the brain, and what that means for our patients. Lyssa Rome And since then, I know you've moved into treatment. Can you say a little bit more about that? Teresa Gray Yeah, absolutely. So after it, yeah. So after Boston, I accepted a faculty position at San Francisco State University. And I continued with the cognitive control work. But that's when I realized, yeah, that's fascinating work. Because it's really better. It's getting to know it's learning more about the brain. And I think that's so important. It's so fascinating. But I think what's also important with our patients is how does the rubber hit the road? How are these people, our patients and their families and caregivers, and the stakeholders, how are they affected by the aphasia? And what does that look like? And so that's when I started, I expanded my research agenda and the program, and I teamed up with Chaleece Sandberg. She was already working on ABSANT, which is abstract semantic associative network training. And that's a treatment that if you train concrete words, they get better. But if you train abstract words, they get better, they improve, but we also see generalization to the untrained concrete words. So when she and I started talking about it, and you know, I bring the bilingual piece. And so we really wanted to develop a bilingual version of ABSANT. And the idea here is that when you treat the dominant language, it improves. But if you treat the non-dominant language, it improves, but you also see cross-language generalization to the untrained dominant language. And as we progressed through these this work, we really we started to realize that it's not just spreading activation that supports the cross-language generalization. There's this level of cognitive control. So to achieve the cross language generalization, we're seeing that not only do you treat the non-dominant language, but patients also need to have intact cognitive control mechanisms at play. So the direction we're moving in is that if we have patients that come to the lab for bilingual ABSANT, we also make sure that we administer some of the nonverbal cognitive control tasks to get a sense of how they're processing that information, because that informs how we interpret the ABSANT performance. Lyssa Rome It sounds like really interesting and important work. And we we've interviewed Chaleece Sandberg on this podcast. I'll put that link in the show notes. Can you can you say more about bilingual ABSANT and what you've learned? Teresa Gray Yeah, sure. So what we've learned, like one aspect that we've come across is that just like, one size doesn't fit all is the same with therapy. And it wasn't before too long that we realized that this bilingual therapy isn't a great fit for all patients. And I'll tell you what I mean, like most bilingual therapies, we're treating patients within monolingual contexts. So you'll treat English and then you treat Spanish. In my lab, one of our goals is we're really trying to be as inclusive as we can. And if a patient comes to us and speaks a language combination, let's say Russian and English, we think about do we have resources? I mean, do I have students available to administer the intervention? Can we norm the stimuli and I've been fortunate enough to have many bilingual students who speak a variety of language combinations. And being in California, most of my students speak English and Spanish, but I've also had Polish-English combinations Chinese-English, Russian-English and a few others. What I'm getting to is that a few years back we had a Tagalog-English English speaking patient, and a very motivated student who wanted to administer bilingual ABSANT. And what we found was that during the English phase, it went as usual but during the Tagalog phase, both patient and clinician reported that it was just, you know, quite frankly, it was weird not to code switch, and it felt constrained and unnatural. And so really the logical next step was to think about, well, really to question, why are we delivering a bilingual therapy in a monolingual context, we shouldn't be doing something where it's more of a code switching based therapy that really fosters the communication that the patient needs. So this was a few years ago, and at the time, we didn't have the bandwidth or resources to address this. And unfortunately, that's how research functions—it's really about capacity and resources. But now here we are, and last summer in 2023, we did start norming our Tagalog data set, and to really move forward with this, a truly code switching, or as some folks are calling it translanguaging, like this new, another phase. So we can actually look at what is most beneficial for these patients who are code switching in their natural environments. And so thus far, we have run one patient who has who has gone through this translanguaging experience. And we're quite fortunate to have two more patients on deck. And so we're pretty excited about this. Lyssa Rome Yeah, that's really exciting. And I think on this podcast, we talk a lot about life participation, the life participation approach is about making therapy as real to life as possible, and I think what you're describing is targeting therapy to the way that people actually use language. Whether you call it code switching, or translanguaging, the way we deliver therapy to people who are bilingual or multilingual should mirror in some way, their experience of speaking more than one language. Am I getting that right? Teresa Gray Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also touches on you know, I think it's important that we listen to our patients, other clinicians, family members, and if you're working with students, listen to your students. For quite some time, my students have been asking about non-English interventions for aphasia. And we all know that the majority of aphasia interventions are based on English speakers. But the thing is, if we're simply adapting English aphasia interventions for non-English languages, does that create treatment resources that are culturally and linguistically appropriate? Now, regarding the cultural piece, oftentimes you can choose stimuli to be culturally appropriate. But what about the linguistic aspects when you take a treatment and simply adapt it to another language? And I think it's important that we stop and think about this issue. And I'm in a situation where my students are thinking about social justice issues within the field of speech pathology, and we're thinking about patient access to services, and what those services are, and are they equitable across diverse linguistic populations? Lyssa Rome It seems like you're talking about really listening to and understanding and asking the right questions of all of the stakeholders—the students, the clinicians, and, of course, the people with aphasia. And, as we were preparing for this podcast, you talked with me a little bit, and I was really interested in what you had to say about, the importance of understanding client's language history and how they use language. And you had some ideas for how to elicit more information about that. Would you mind sharing that for a moment? Teresa Gray Well, one thing I've learned to ask, and I learned this from Maria Muñoz, who's down in Los Angeles. One thing I think it's really important is how we ask questions to our patients and their families. And so rather than asking someone if they're bilingual, which can be a loaded question, and people interpret it in different ways, because some folks think, well, to be bilingual, you need to be highly proficient in both languages. But really, that's not the case, right? Like, we want to know if people have exposure or if they use a language other than English. And so rather than asking you, if someone's bilingual, you can say, “Do you speak another language other than English?” Or “Do you understand another language?” And then people really start to open up. Another important way to ask questions is, you know, who are you directing your question to? Are you asking the person with aphasia about their needs and what they want to do, versus the families? Sometimes families will say, “Our 24/7, caregiver is speaking Tagalog.” Let's say you're Spanish, so they really need to speak Spanish, but maybe the patient wants to get back to their, you know, a club or something, you know, some social group that they're a part of, and they want to practice a different language. So again, you know, the language history, the way we ask questions, I think it's quite important when we're gathering information so that we can develop, you know, these rehabilitation programs for patients. One way that we're addressing equitable services in my lab is that we've thought with my students and I we've thought about going back to the original ABSANT. So original ABSANT was developed for English monolinguals. And we decided to push ahead with a Spanish monolingual version. And this is quite important in the United States. This population, Spanish speakers, are growing, especially in certain areas, of course, in California. We really wanted to see we're assuming that ABSANT can be adapted to various languages. And theoretically, it should make sense. But I think it's important that we have the data that shows it. And so we've in this past year, we've started collecting data to actually show that yes, it is effective, because I think as conscientious clinicians, and in our profession, we talk about best practice. It's important that we show it. And so, moving forward, this is what we're doing and we're quite thrilled that we have the resources and the opportunity to move forward with this type of a project. Lyssa Rome It sounds like you're describing how equitable services starts with research that's more inclusive and is itself more equitable. Teresa Gray Absolutely. And I think it also it reminds me of how do we capture improvement? How do you measure success? Because right now, when we're doing research, or right now, when we're doing research, and also clinicians out there in the field, we talk about data collection, right? How are you measuring improvement? And for us in the lab, we're looking at effect sizes, but sometimes these effects sizes aren't significant. However, the patient reports that they feel more comfortable, and they're more confident at family gatherings, or out in the community, and that maybe they won't ask for help at the grocery store, but if they need to, they're not scared. And I think that is so I mean, that's invaluable. But how do you measure that? And how do we incorporate that into our data collection? And how we report improvement to the funding sources? Right? Because all of us I, you know, you can't get very far when without talking about insurance dollars and how we measure improvement to get more services for our patients. Lyssa Rome I think that that's, that's absolutely true. And I think we have to measure what's important to the person that we're that we're working with. I, I also wanted to talk with you about the identity-based conversation clubs that you have been working on at San Francisco State. Can you say a little bit more about those? Dr. Teresa Gray Yeah, sure. So we do have a few different groups, conversation groups, through my lab. And one group, it started out as just a service to the community. And so we started an English-speaking group. And at first a few years back, we were in person, but we transitioned to Zoom once COVID hit, I was very impressed with my team, because here in California, when things shut down in mid-March, within three weeks, the group was online. Around that time, maybe a few years ago, we started talking about a Spanish-speaking group, we do have many bilingual patients who are Spanish-English bilinguals, a few of these folks are more comfortable speaking in English. That's their emotional language, and it's their human right to use that language to communicate. So my lab put together a team to start hosting a Spanish-speaking group. And what we've seen is that there's just a different dynamic, when you're speaking in the language that you're most comfortable using. Jokes are different. Chit-chat is different. And we found that patients report a great appreciation for the Spanish-speaking group. In addition to the Spanish conversation group, we also have a Black conversation group that's facilitated by Black student clinicians. This group was started back in January of 2022. Lyssa Rome And we spoke with some of the members of that group on this podcast and I'll again, I'll put the link to that in our show notes. And they were the people who participate in that group. Some of the members of that group had a lot of really positive things to say about how meaningful is had been to them to be amongst other Black people who share their experience. So maybe you can say a little bit more about that group? Teresa Gray Yes. So this group, it was started based on public interest. So one day in 2021, I received a phone call from a woman whose father had suffered a stroke. And she said to me, my dad is Black. He frequently attends aphasia groups. But the majority of people are white, where's the diversity? She was essentially asking, Where's the diversity? We know Black people are having strokes. But where are they? And what resources are there for people of color who have strokes? And of course these are important points that she's raising. And, in fact, leading up to this woman's call, my students and I were, we had been talking about starting this type of a group, but I wasn't sure if there was interest. But that being said, we know when we look at health disparities, and we look at the data, we know that Black people have as much as a fourfold higher incidence of stroke than their white counterparts. But Black people are less likely to receive rehabilitation services. And that's just not right. I have, you know, in this group, like you were saying, lists of people are so appreciative, and they're so interested, and they just really value this group. And I've had some of these patients who have said to me, Look, it was the summer of Black Lives Matter, people were getting murdered in the streets, people were rioting, and there was this national discourse going on about it. And they wanted to talk about it. But their aphasia conversation groups, were talking about the weather, or sports or the things that just seemed inconsequential at that time in their lives. And I think this just gets back to the importance when we think about identity groups—what they are for these people with aphasia, and how do we facilitate and coordinate them? And especially, you know, when the majority of SLPs are white and monolingual? How do we step into this arena? And how do we support and how do we, how do we move forward with these, you know, with these groups that are so valuable and meaningful for people with aphasia? Yeah. Lyssa Rome I mean, I think it's incredibly important work. What have you learned about some of the best practices? Teresa Gray Sure, yeah. So I think it's all about, you know, being open and listening, but also learning how are you an ally? How do you ask questions? How do you make yourself vulnerable? Because if you're not sure about something, you want to ask. And, you know, sometimes with these groups, we've all left groups or situations where we reflect upon like, “Oh, I said, I said something—was that appropriate? I don't know.” But again, it's making ourselves vulnerable, and asking you to going back to the group next week and say, “Hey, I heard this, or I said, this, was that appropriate?” I think it's just being comfortable with this kind of discourse. To get there, it just takes practice, which just is, you know, going through the motions and doing the work and going through it and experiencing it. Lyssa Rome It seems like that's something that you've really prioritized within your lab and with your students and in your work. Teresa Gray Yeah, and you know, and we make a point to talk about it, we talk about what it looks like, how it feels, and sometimes those are hard conversations to have. There's literature out there. There's different resources to lean on. But it's definitely I mean, we're all learning as we going as well as we're going and I think it's about having just being reflective, which which can be challenging. But I think that I think as we come through to the other side, we're growing and it's this bi-directional growth, whether it's me and my students, us and the patients, the caregivers, just having these honest conversations because I think our goals are the same, right? Our priorities are to improve quality of life. And and that's essentially what we're doing. Lyssa Rome Coming back to bilingualism, I'm wondering if you have any additional thoughts or advice about use of interpreters, or thoughts for bilingual clinicians? How can they best work with and support people with aphasia? Who are also bilingual? Or who are non-English speaking? Teresa Gray That's a great question Lyssa, because many of us, many of SLPs are not bilingual. And quite frankly, even if you are bilingual, you may not speak the language of that population where you are working. So it's so important that we partner with our interpreters. And know knowing who they are at your site. And this is tricky, because when we talk about this, one recipe isn't for everyone, because all sites are different. The way interpreters are set up in one hospital differs from the next hospital. So you need to know your system and then figure it out. Because if you want to start a conversation group, and you don't speak that language, you're gonna have to team up with the interpreter. And, and I think my advice now is, you know, it's not just about asking the interpreter about that culture or language, it's about doing your homework. So for instance, if you have Spanish-speaking groups, it's important to know what countries your patients come from. And this is valuable because holidays vary across countries, and even within countries holidays and traditions will vary. So you know, when these and these variations can feed into your group discussions. So for instance, around the holidays, people can share what they do with their families, what foods do they eat, how do they celebrate? Last year, we had a Spanish-speaking group, and it was around the Fourth of July. And so rather than talking about the US Independence Day, each participant shared what their country's independence day looked like, and growing up what their traditions were. And people really enjoyed that type of activities. As clinicians, learning about cultures, is so important. I know SLPs, you know, your time is so valuable, right? Like, our caseloads are high, but we can learn bits of information, talk to interpreters, explore topics, and then have activities. And if we go into it with open, you know, just creating a safe space where we're all learning, I think it creates this environment where people feel welcome, and they're comfortable. It's a positive environment when you have an SLP, who may not speak the language, but you have an interpreter who does. And then the participants, of course, they speak that language as well. Lyssa Rome It reminds me of what you were saying earlier about the importance of careful listening to the people that we're working with, including interpreters, right, but also particularly the people with aphasia, who we're serving. Are there any other best practices that you want to share for SLPs who are working with historically marginalized populations of people with aphasia? Teresa Gray Well, I think at the end of the day, it's important that when we go into these environments, thinking about what materials are we using? How are people responding? And creating a space that if we have open eyes, we're open to suggestions. It creates an environment where people are comfortable to share, and, and then even when people give feedback, we can also improve our practice. Lyssa Rome I think that that's at the heart of what we aim to do as, as people who believe in the life participation approach. So thank you for that. I'm wondering as you look ahead, what's on the horizon for you in terms of your research in terms of your work in your lab? Can you tell us a little bit about, about what you're working on now, or what you're looking forward to working on? Teresa Gray Well, one thing on the horizon that we're quite excited about is with our Black conversation club, it has had such a great reception, and the participants are so thrilled to be there, that we really want to dive deeper, and take a look at what makes this group so special. And so we're ramping up now, hopefully we'll be starting soon. I'm partnering with Jamie Azios, who's in Louisiana, and her expertise is in conversation analysis. And so we're teaming up to start looking at the Black conversation club, to look at the discourse and try to figure out well, what are the themes? What is the secret sauce? What is the special sauce that makes this group so powerful? Because I think, you know, when when we have the when you know, when you have data that shows that, and we can write about it and share it with our colleagues, I'm hoping this will inspire and give more of a foundation platform for our colleagues to start groups like this. Because if you have a research paper out there, it's something to hold on to. And it's something to really say like, look, this is effective. And it's worth it's, you know, it's so meaningful and valuable that we should be starting groups like this and other places as well. Lyssa Rome Absolutely. I agree. And I really look forward to that research. I think it's so important. So thank you for doing that work. Dr. Teresa Gray Thank you so much for your work, and for coming on the podcast to talk to us about it. I really appreciate it. It's been great talking with you. Teresa Gray Great, thanks so much. Lyssa Rome And thanks also to our listeners. For the references and resources mentioned in today's show, please see our show notes. They're available on our website, www.aphasiaaccess.org. There, you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. For Aphasia Access Conversations, I'm Lyssa Rome. Links Gray Matter Lab at San Francisco State University Jamie Azios — Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast episode (Second episode) NAA Black Americans with Aphasia Conversation Group — Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast episode Chaleece Sandberg — Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast episode Article: Beveridge, M. E., & Bak, T. H. (2011). The languages of aphasia research: Bias and diversity. Aphasiology, 25(12), 1451-1468. Article: Gray, T., Palevich, J., & Sandberg, C. (2023). Bilingual Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (BAbSANT): A Russian–English case study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-17. Open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/bilingual-abstract-semantic-associative-network-training-babsant-a-russianenglish-case-study/9B7FD1EDBDAB6FD042CD4714E1548005 Article: Sandberg, C. W., Zacharewicz, M., & Gray, T. (2021). Bilingual Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (BAbSANT): A Polish-English case study. Journal of Communication Disorders, 93, 106143. Article: Gray, T., Doyle, K., & Rowell, A. (2022). Creating a Safe Space for Black Adults With Aphasia. Leader Live. Open Access: https://leader.pubs.asha.org/do/10.1044/2022-0614-black-aphasia-group/full/

SLU rebrands speech-language pathology program to help meet growing demand

St. Louis on the Air

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2024 27:03

This fall, St. Louis University will launch a program that will allow students to graduate with a B.S. and M.S. in speech-language pathology in five years, one year sooner than a traditional six-year track. The effort comes after projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that the profession is expected to grow 19% by 2032. Dr. Travis Threats, professor and chair of St. Louis University's Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and graduate student Lucy Heller join the show.

Marissa Rocheleau Discusses Negotiating Contracts

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2023 56:49

Marissa Rocheleau, M.A., CCC-SLP earned a Bachelors degree from Indiana University in 2010, double majoring in Psychology and Speech and Hearing Sciences with a minor in Linguistics. She completed her Masters in Speech Pathology from Indiana University in 2012. Since 2014, Marissa has worked in schools and private practices, specializing in online service delivery and evaluations. She now focuses on running her companies Linguabilities and Telepractice Connect, where she oversees an amazing team of therapists and collaborates with like minded business owners. She holds the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). In her free time, Marissa enjoys spending time with her dogs, Petri, Bunsen, and Early, crafting miniatures, and cheating on crossword puzzles. www.linguabilites.com www.telepracticeconnect.com info@linguabilities.com ___________________________________________________ You can listen to this episode wherever you stream podcasts and at www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com/telepractice-today-podcast If you would like to become a content creator and share your knowledge with others, consider working with the 3C Digital Media Network. To learn more, visit www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com or contact todd@3cdigitalmedianetwork.com.

Who Says You Can't Combatting Senior Moments?

Advantages To Aging Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2023 23:35

Senior moments are the worst and can be embarrassing. Maybe you lose your keys often or can't remember how to get out of Target. Well, Stan Goldberg, 10 times published author is here to shed some light on the brain, 9 types of senior moments, 5 steps to combat senior moments, and how we can be proactive to age gracefully. All senior moments are not the same and Stan explained why in this episode. And come to find out there are many types of memory, not just short and long-term. Did you know that? Stan was able to offer peace of mind with science to back him up about our brains. Even in patients with Alzheimer's, they were able to grow new neurons and neuro pathways. So once a brain cell dies, that's not the end of the story, we can grow new ones. It's through those creative tasks! But we have to take care of our brains as we age with proper hydration, nutrition, and proactively look at research and being our best own advocate! Who says aging has to mean impariment? Professor Emeritus Stan Goldberg, PhD, has worked with the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University for more than 25 years, while writing hundreds of articles and publishing nine books in four languages. As a person living with cancer, Dr. Goldberg taught, provided therapy, researched, and published in the areas of learning problems, communication disorders, loss, change and end-of-life issues. Stan's upcoming book, Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Alert into Your 90s and Beyond, opens a window into how our brain processes information, and shows how numerous scientifically-based strategies can be used to simply, easily, and independently prevent senior moments - ranging from forgetting appointments to becoming disorientated. To Connect with Stan Goldberg: on Facebook @StanGoldberg and X @stangoldberg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stangoldberg/ online stangoldbergwriter.com Grab your copy today of his latest book: Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Alert into Your 90s and Beyond Keep your skin looking great, they'll never guess your age with Neora Skincare! To find me on social media: Debbi-Jo Horton Join my podcast community Learn more in my Facebook Group: Advantages to Aging

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Ep 115: The Connection Between Technology and Healthcare

Coach Me If You Can podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2023 22:43

How can students and practitioners from all fields bridge technology with healthcare? Join us as we speak with Swathi Kiran, who is the Founding Director for the Center for Brain Recovery and Professor of Neurorehabilitation in BU's Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences. Listen to hear about her experiences with telehealth and software development along with her perspective on the emerging roles of AI and technology in healthcare.

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Episode 16: Karen Erickson

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2023 38:59

Join Kristie Wurglitz and Maureen Brandywine as we talk to Karen Erickson. Karen Erickson, Ph.D. is the Director of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, a Professor in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and the Yoder Distinguished Professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences, School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research addresses literacy assessment and instruction for struggling readers of all ages including those with significant disabilities. Karen is co-developer of the Tar Heel Reader online library of accessible books for beginning readers, as well as several other assistive and learning technologies. She is a former teacher of children with significant disabilities.

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LU Moment: Learn more about the LU Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences | S6 Ep. 4

LU Moment with Shelly Vitanza

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2023 15:39

Listen in as we sit down with Karen Whisenhunt-Saar, assistant professor in the Lamar University Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, as she discusses the department's role at LU and in the local community.For updates on the latest news and events at Lamar University, visit lamar.edu/news.

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Hola Bloomington – 08/25/2023 Raquel Anderson, IU Professor

Hola Bloomington – WFHB

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 25, 2023 57:39

For today’s show, Raquel Anderson, Professor at IU for Speech Language and Hearing Sciences, talked about the process of language development in child dual language learners and social factors that impact language input and use.

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S2E17. Pursuing a Postdoctoral Fellowship

About, From, & With: A SLP Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2023 41:43

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Sonali Poudel, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali shares why she decided to pursue a postdoc, how she found her position, how she determined if the position would be a good fit, and what her weekly responsibilities entail. You can learn more about Sonali and her research on the Children's Language, Literacy, and Learning Lab website. The show notes and a transcript of the episode are available at aboutfromandwith.com.

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The Journey to and through Grad School with Cerebral Palsy with Angie Evenich

What The Fricative

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2023 45:45 Transcription Available

Angela Evenich (she/her) is a self-proclaimed disability activist and disabled graduate student studying Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University (Graduated May 2023 | Class of 2023). Her passion for empowering others as a speech-language therapist is fueled by her experiences with disability advocacy, receiving disability-related services, and navigating the world as someone with cerebral palsy.

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Lesley Edwards-Gaither Discusses the Future of Telepractice

Head and Neck Innovations

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2023 40:03

Lesley Edwards-Gaither, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is an Assistant Professor at Metropolitan State University-Denver, Department of Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences. Her areas of research include the intersections of culture, communication, and technology. Lesley teaches undergraduate and graduate courses focusing on assessment, cultural-linguistic diversity, introduction to human communication disorders, and a speech-language pathology assistant pre-certification course. In addition to teaching, she is an independent eLearning consultant developing hybrid and online courses and educating students and SLPs on telepractice technology. She recently co-authored the textbook, Telepractice: A Clinical Guide for Speech-Language Pathologists with Melissa Jakubowitz. Links: MSU Denver SLHS Department: https://www.msudenver.edu/speech-language-hearing-sciences/ Viewpoint Telepractice 2025 article: https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_PERSP-22-00095 You can listen to this episode wherever you stream podcasts and at www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com/telepractice-today-podcast

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Updates from the World Dysphagia Summit

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2023 17:35

In this week's episode we are joined by Dr. Georgia Malandraki, Professor in the Department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University and Faculty Associate in the Center on Aging and the Lifecycle, along with Dr. Martin Brodsky, Section Head of Speech-Language Pathology here in our Head and Neck Institute. Listen as we discuss highlights from the World Dysphagia Summit.

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Building a Small But Thriving Practice Focused on Literacy and Dyslexia With Heather Caska

Private Practice Success Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2023 31:48

Are you thinking about starting a private practice but want to keep it small? In this episode of Private Practice Success Stories, I sat down with Heather Caska who plans to do just that. She talks about her clinic space, how she gets clients, how she wants to stay small on purpose, and why growth doesn't mean having a large practice. If you've been thinking about starting a private practice to serve a specific population, or if you want to see an example of a smaller but thriving private practice, you aren't going to want to miss this episode. Heather is a certified speech-language pathologist and owner of HBC Language and Literacy. She has over 10 years of experience as a speech-language pathologist. Heather is also the President of the Arizona Branch of the International Dyslexia Association.She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences from the University of Arizona and completed her Master's in Clinical Speech-Language Pathology from Northern Arizona University. She has experience working with a variety of communication disorders; however, her true passion lies in working with children with dyslexia and their families and educating other SLPs on their role in early identification of dyslexia.In Today's Episode, We Discuss:Heather's SLP journey and why she decided to start her private practiceHow Heather gets her clientsThe transition from home health to a brick-and-mortar practiceWho Heather helps in her private practice and what she does for themWhy Heather decided to keep her private practice small How Heather keeps sight of what really matters and sets boundaries in her businessThe other areas Heather wants to explore outside of clinical practiceI hope you enjoyed this conversation with Heather! Growth means different things to different people, and my goal for you and anyone in the Grow Your Private Practice program is to help you grow your private practice to a level that feels right for you. For many people, that means serving your community without overbooking your schedule. To learn more about the Grow Your Private Practice Program, visit GrowYourPrivatePractice.comWhether you want to start a private practice or grow your existing private practice, I can help you get the freedom, flexibility, fulfillment, and financial abundance that you deserve. Visit my website www.independentclinician.com to learn more.Resources Mentioned: Visit Heather's website: https://www.soarwithwords.com/Follow Heather on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soarwithwords/Learn more about dyslexia education: https://soarwithwords.teachable.com/Where We Can Connect: Follow the Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/private-practice-success-stories/id1374716199Follow Me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/independentclinician/Connect on Facebook:

Are you supporting your baby's growth and development? With Guest Michelle Mintz

Imperfect Mommying: Better Parenting through Self Healing with Alysia Lyons

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2023 49:20

In this episode, guest speaker Michelle Mitz and I delve into the fascinating world of early baby development and provide insights and tips for parents and caregivers to support their baby's growth and development in the first year of life. We discuss common speech challenges that parents may face during the first year and provide practical strategies for addressing them. Whether you're a first-time parent or a seasoned caregiver, this podcast will provide you with valuable information and support for your baby's first words. Michelle Mintz, M.S., CCC-SLP, The Early Development Expert, is the creator of Baby Blooming Moments™, a unique, one-on-one parent coaching experience, virtually or in person, empowering parents, siblings, grandparents and nannies to enrich the way they interact with their babies and toddlers. Michelle develops personalized, proactive strategies helping families transform everyday in-the-moment interactions into valuable, teachable opportunities. Implementing her strategies and hands-on activities throughout the day helps increase communication, brain connections, learning and social development during those crucial early formative years when the most impactful brain development occurs – which helps all babies and toddlers bloom! Michelle, who earned her B.A. in Speech and Hearing Sciences from U.C. Santa Barbara and her M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from Boston University before establishing her private practice in Santa Monica, CA in 1995, has decades of experience working with families. She is also the author of All Done Binky!, a book to help support families with babies and toddlers weaning off pacifiers. Connect with Michelle: Facebook/Instagram @babybloomingmoments LinkedIn @MichelleMintz www.alysialyons.com Connect with me: linktr.ee/momsupportcoach --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/momsupportcoach/support

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#28 The Pod with Chantelle Varnado

The Pod with the Baton Rouge Area Foundation

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2023 27:43

Dr. Chantelle Varnado, Executive Director of Launch, has been working with children with disabilities and their families for over twenty years. She earned her Bachelor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and Master of Communication Sciences and Disorders degrees from Southeastern Louisiana University. She worked as a Speech-Language Pathologist for 14 years in Livingston Parish Public Schools and at Children's Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2015, She earned her Doctorate of Philosophy in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Louisiana State University. She founded Launch, a non-profit organization that serves children with disabilities and their families, in June of 2015. She has served as adjunct faculty, guest lecturer, and clinical supervisor for local universities since the time. She is a member of American Speech, Language and Hearing Association, Livingston Parish Chamber of Commerce, and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. She also works with Special Olympics Healthy Athletes, BREC's Inclusive Activities, Different Abilities, Incredible Kids of Denham Springs, STARS Soccer Club and numerous community organizations that promote extracurricular and inclusive activities for children with disabilities. Dr. Varnado lives in Denham Springs with her husband, Brad Varnado, of 21 years and two children Braden and Addison. To learn more about Launch, please visit www.launchpeds.com or Facebook @launchpeds. To learn more about BRAF, head over to braf.org.

The truth about speech, language, and hearing science withTeresa Girolamo, Ph.D

Moments of Joy

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2023 27:17

Today Im sitting down with Teresa Girolamo, Ph.D., she is an autistic language in autism researcher and assistant professor in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Diego State University. As director of the Brain, Environment, and Language Lab, she works with racially and ethnically minoritized autistic individuals with language impairment. This population is underserved in research, hindering our ability to develop supports to meet their needs. Current projects include how social determinants of health plus language ability shape life outcomes and how to better understand strengths in language ability in this population. The long-term goal of this work is to translate this knowledge into community-based supports for individuals to meet their self-identified goals.

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Teaching Kids to Talk Back with Joanne Cazeau (Koze Speech Therapy)

Friends of Franz

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 3, 2023 63:49

The ability to communicate with others, in whatever mode or form, is truly such a gift. Whether it's through spoken words, written language, signs made by the hands, or through the use of devices, our thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants can be expressed to others. Unfortunately, this is not the truth for everybody. According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 5-10% of Americans may have difficulties in communication, ranging from speech disorders (the inability to correctly or fluently produce voice and sounds) and language disorders (impairments with understanding and sharing ideas with others). Additional statistics, such as about 5% of children having noticeable disorders with speech and over 3 million Americans who stutter, present the sad truth that there are those who cannot fully voice out both the joy and the pain they experience.We are joined today by Joanne Cazeau, a certified pediatric speech-language pathologist (SLP) by The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), early interventionist, and a private practice director in Bergen County, New Jersey. She received her BS in Speech and Hearing Sciences with a concentration in Speech-Language Pathology and a Minor in Public Health from The George Washington University in 2015, and MS in Speech-Language Pathology from Howard University in 2017. She has worked as an SLP clinician at Kennedy Krieger Institute, where she assessed, diagnosed, and treated speech, language, oral motor, and swallowing disorders. In 2021, she founded Koze Speech Therapy, specializing in infants, toddlers, and children with communication delays and disorders.Livestream Air Date: May 4, 2022Joanne Cazeau, MS, CCC-SLP: IG @beyondbabblesFriends of Franz: IG @friendsoffranzpod & FB @friendsoffranzpodChristian Franz (Host): IG @chrsfranz & YT Christian FranzThankful to the season's brand partners: Clove, BETR Remedies, Eko, Lumify, RescueMD, Medical School for Kids, Your Skincare Expert, Twrl Milk Tea

26 Letters = INFINITE Possibilities

Autism Parenting Secrets

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 23, 2023 45:09

Welcome to Episode 140 of Autism Parenting Secrets. When it comes to the journey to supporting your child, one big secret is there are angels among us. Today we're joined by one of them. Someone who shares our mission of serving these children and adults, that includes those on the autism spectrum, non-speakers, and people who are simply underestimated. To meet them where they are and help them bring their gifts forward.Our guest this week is Elizabeth Vosseller. She's worked with individuals with complex communication and sensory-motor differences since 1995. She began her career as an SLP (Speech Language Pathologist) at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC where she began to specialize in autism. From there, Elizabeth spent twelve years as an Assistant Professor at The George Washington University.Elizabeth's greatest joy is working with clients and families. She opened Growing Kids Therapy Center (GKTC) in Herndon, Virginia and uses Assistive Technology to educate and teach students the purposeful motor skills to Spell to Communicate (S2C). Elizabeth enjoys teaching parents, educators, caregivers, and other professionals to support nonspeaking individuals through S2C.The Secret This Week is…26 Letters = INFINITE Possibilities You'll Discover:A Big Assumption That Yields HUGE Benefits (3:41)Two Things That DON'T Have a Look (7:17)Why Testing Underestimates So Many People (10:09)Why MOTOR Is a Significant Component In Autism (13:18)Distinctions Between Reflexive, Impulsive, and Purposeful Motor (17:07)How Operating Systems Vary (22:09)Speech Language 101 (23:22)How S2C Works (28:37)Some Amazing Possibilities That Emerge From S2C (35:14)A Great Resource To Access S2C Resources (40:11)About Our Guest:Elizabeth Vosseller has worked with individuals with complex communication and sensory-motor differences since 1995. She began her career as an SLP at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC where she began to specialize in autism. From there, Elizabeth spent twelve years as an Assistant Professor at The George Washington University teaching more than twenty different courses to undergraduate and graduate students in both Speech and Hearing Sciences and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Elizabeth developed a passion for clinical training through her work with field supervision and training to teachers and SLPs during their graduate studies.Elizabeth's greatest joy is working with clients and families she opened Growing Kids Therapy Center (GKTC) in Herndon, Virginia. In 2013, she began using Assistive Technology to educate and teach students the purposeful motor skills to Spell to Communicate (S2C). Elizabeth enjoys teaching parents, educators, caregivers, and other professionals to support nonspeaking individuals through S2C.Elizabeth survives on mass quantities of coffee! She loves learning, exploring the world through travel, is an avid reader and an experimental crafter.https://growingkidstherapy.com/elizabeth-vosseller/ References in The Episode:Growing Kids Therapy Center https://growingkidstherapy.com/I-ASC (International Association for Spelling as Communication) https://i-asc.org/Additional Resources:Take The Quiz: What's YOUR Top Autism Parenting Blindspot?To learn more about Cass & Len, visit us at www.autismparentingsecrets.comBe sure to follow Cass & Len on InstagramIf you enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends.

Forum From The Archives: ‘Life on Delay' Examines Life with a Stutter

KQED’s Forum

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2023 55:33

In January 2020, Atlantic senior editor John Hendrickson wrote an article about Joe Biden's stutter. Like Biden, Hendrickson has a stutter. And while stuttering wasn't something that Hendrickson hid, it wasn't something he liked to talk about either. But the viral response to his piece led Hendrickson to reconsider how to talk and think about his stutter. His relationship with stuttering and its impacts, both good and bad, on his life, are the focus of his new book, “Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter.” We talk to Hendrickson, and hear from you: Has your life been affected by a stutter, yours or someone else's? This segment originally aired Jan. 17, 2023. Guests: John Hendrickson , Author, "Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter" - Hendrickson is a senior editor with Atlantic magazine. Courtney Byrd, Professor, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Texas at Austin - Byrd is also the founder and executive director of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research

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‘Life on Delay' Examines Life with a Stutter

KQED’s Forum

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2023 55:33

In January 2020, Atlantic senior editor John Hendrickson wrote an article about Joe Biden's stutter. Like Biden, Hendrickson has a stutter. And while stuttering wasn't something that Hendrickson hid, it wasn't something he liked to talk about either. But the viral response to his piece led Hendrickson to reconsider how to talk and think about his stutter. His relationship with stuttering and its impacts, both good and bad, on his life, are the focus of his new book, “Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter.” We talk to Hendrickson, and hear from you: Has your life been affected by a stutter, yours or someone else's? Guests: John Hendrickson , Author, "Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter" - Hendrickson is a senior editor with Atlantic magazine. Courtney Byrd, Professor, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Texas at Austin - Byrd is also the founder and executive director of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 113: Maximizing Your Babies Development with Baby Blooming Moments Michelle Mintz

The Kids Sleep Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2022 24:52

Join me as I welcome Michelle Mintz, M.S., CCC-SLP, The Early Development Expert, & the creator of Baby Blooming Moments™, a unique, one-on-one parent coaching experience, virtually or in person, empowering parents, siblings, grandparents, and nannies to enrich the way they interact with their babies and toddlers. Michelle develops personalized, proactive strategies to help families transform everyday in-the-moment interactions into valuable, teachable opportunities. Implementing her strategies and hands-on activities throughout the day helps increase communication, brain connections, learning, and social development during those crucial early formative years when the most impactful brain development occurs – which helps all babies and toddlers bloom! Michelle, who earned her B.A. in Speech and Hearing Sciences from U.C. Santa Barbara and her M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from Boston University before establishing her private practice in Santa Monica, CA in 1995, has decades of experience working with families. She is also the author of All Done Binky!, a book to help support families with babies and toddlers weaning off pacifiers.

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Episode #93: Raising Voices, Spirits, and Data through the SingWell Project: In conversation with Dr. Arla Good and Dr. Jessica Richardson

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2022 48:43

Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Ellen Bernstein-Ellis, Program Specialist at the Aphasia Treatment Program at Cal State East Bay in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm today's hosts for an episode featuring Dr. Arla Good and Dr. Jessica Richardson. We will discuss the SingWell Project and the role of aphasia choirs from a bio-psychosocial model. Today's shows features the following gap areas from the Aphasia Access State of Aphasia Report authored by Nina Simmons-Mackie: Gap area #3: insufficient availability of communication intervention for people with aphasia, or the need for services. Gap area #8: insufficient attention to depression and low mood across the continuum of care. Gap area #5: insufficient attention to life participation across the continuum of care. Guest Bios: Dr. Arla Good is the Co-director and Chief Researcher of the SingWell Project, an initiative uniting over 20 choirs for communication challenges around the world. Dr. Good is a member of the Science of Music, Auditory Research and Technology or SMART lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University. Much of her work over the last decade has sought to identify and optimize music based interventions that can contribute to psychological and social well-being in a variety of different populations. Dr. Jessica Richardson is an associate professor and speech-language pathologist at the University of New Mexico in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and the Center for Brain Recovery and Repair. She is director of the UN M brain scouts lab and the stable and progressive aphasia center or space. Her research interest is recovering from acquired brain injury with a specific focus on aphasia, recovery, and management of primary progressive aphasia. She focuses on innovations in assessment and treatment with a focus on outcome measures that predict real world communication abilities, and life participation. Listener Take-aways In today's episode you will: Learn about the SingWell Project model of supporting choirs and research around the world Learn which five clinical populations are the initial targets of the SingWell Project Discover how the SingWell Project is challenging the stigma about disability and singing Learn about some of the biopsychosocial measures being used to capture choir outcomes Transcript edited for conciseness Show notes Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 02:58 I'm going to admit that aphasia choirs have long been one of my clinical passions. I'm really excited and honored to host this episode today. I'd like to just start with a question or two that will help our listeners get to know you both a little better. So Arla, is it okay, if I start with you? Would you share what motivated you to focus your research on music-based interventions? Do you have a personal connection to music? Arla Good 03:29 I feel like I could do a whole podcast on how I ended up in this field. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 03:33 That'd be fun. Arla Good 03:34 There's just so many anecdotes on how music can be a powerful tool. I've experienced it in my own life, and I've witnessed it in other lives. I'll share one example. My grandfather had aphasia and at my convocation when I was graduating in the Department of Psychology with a BA, despite not being able to communicate and express himself, he sang the Canadian National Anthem, perfect pitch-- all of the words. It's just an accumulation of anecdotes like that, that brought me to study music psychology. And over the course of my graduate studies, I came to see how it can be super beneficial for specific populations like aphasia. So, I do have a quote from one of our choir participants that really sparked the whole idea of SingWell. It was a Parkinson's choir that we were working with. And she says, “At this point, I don't feel like my Parkinson's defines me as much as it used to. Now that I've been singing with the group for a while, I feel that I'm also a singer who is part of a vibrant community.” And that really just encapsulates what it is and why I'm excited to be doing what I'm doing-- to be bringing more positivity and the identity and strength into these different communities. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 04:49 Yes, the development of positive self-identity in the face of facing adversity is such an important contribution to what we do and thank you for sharing that personal journey. That was really beautiful. Jessica, I'm hoping to get to hear a little bit about why what your personal connection is to aphasia choirs and music. Jessica Richardson 05:12 Again, so many things. I grew up in a musical household. Everyone in my family sings and harmonizes and it's just beautiful. But a lot of my motivation for music and groups came from first just seeing groups. So some early experience with groups at the VA. Seeing Dr. Audrey Holland in action, of course, at the University of Arizona-that's where I did my training. Dr. Elman, you, of course, so many great examples that led to the development of lots of groups. We do virtual online groups for different treatments, different therapies. We have space exploration. We have space teams, which is communication partner instruction that's virtual. So we do lots of groups. And of course, we have a neuro choir here in New Mexico. Now, I'm just so excited that there's so much research that's coming out to support it. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 06:03 Jessica, can I just give you a little shout out? Because you were visionary. You actually created these amazing YouTube videos of your choir singing virtually, even before COVID. And you came out with the first virtual aphasia choir. I remember just sitting there and just watching it and being amazed. And little did we know. I guess you knew! Do you want to just take a moment because I want to put those links in our show notes and encourage every listener to watch these beautiful virtual choir songs that you've done. You've done two right? Jessica Richardson 06:44 Yes. And I could not have done it, I need to make sure I give a shout out to my choir director, Nicole Larson, who's now Nicole Larson Vegas. She was an amazing person to work with on those things. She also now has opened a branch neuro choir, just one town over. We're in Albuquerque and she's in Corrales and our members can go to either one. We coordinate our songs. I'd really like to start coordinating worldwide, Ellen. We can share resources and do virtual choirs worldwide and with Aphasia Choirs Go Global. But I definitely want to give her a shout out. And then of course our members. I mean, they were really brave to do that. Because there was nothing I could point them to online already to say, “Hey, people are doing this. You do it.” So they were really courageous to be some of the first. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 07:36 Do you want to mention the two songs so people know what to look for? And just throw in the name of your choir. Jessica Richardson 07:42 We're just the UNM neuro choir as part of the UNM Brain Scouts. The first song was The Rose. The second song was This is Me from the Greatest Showman. And the song journal that you could wait for in the future is going to be Don't Give Up On Me by Andy Grammer. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 08:01 Beautiful! I can hardly wait. And there are some endeavors and efforts being made to create these international groups. Thank you for doing a shout out to Aphasia Choirs Go Global, which is a Facebook group to support people who are involved in neuro and aphasia choirs. I'll give a shout out to Bron Jones who helped start it and Alli Talmage from New Zealand who has worked really hard to build a community there. It's been really wonderful to have a place where we can throw out questions to each other and ask for opinions and actually dig into some interesting questions like, “What measures are you using to capture X, Y, or Z?” I think we'll get to talk about some of that today, actually. So thank you. I encourage our listeners to listen to those two YouTube videos we'll put in the show notes. But Jessica, I'm going to give you a twofer here. I've been following your amazing work for many years, but the first time I got to meet you in person was at an Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. I wanted to ask you as an Aphasia Access member, if you have any particular Aphasia Access memories that you could share with our listeners? Jessica Richardson 09:09 Well, it was actually that memory. So, I would say my all-time favorite collection of Aphasia Access moments, really was working with my amazing colleague, Dr. Katerina Haley. She's at UNC Chapel Hil. We were co-program chairs for the Aphasia Access 2017 summit in Florida. The whole summit, I still think back on it and just smile so wide. And you know, we went to the museum, we were at the Aphasia House, just so many wonderful things. All of the round tables and the presentations, they just rocked my world. And it's just something I'm super proud to have been a part of behind the scenes making it happen. And I also remember that you wrote me the nicest note afterwards. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 09:54 It was just because it impacted me, too. Personally, I felt like it just cracked open such a world of being able to have engaging discussions with colleagues. Tom Sather, really named it the other day (at IARC) when he quoted Emile Durkheim's work on collective effervescence, the sense of being together with a community. I'm seeing Arla, nodding her head too. Arla Good Yeah, I like that. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Yeah, there was a lot of effervescing at these Leadership Summits, and we have one coming up in 2023. I'm really excited about it and hope to get more information out to our listeners about that. So I'll just say stay tuned. And you'll be hearing more, definitely. I just want to do one more shout out. And that is, you mentioned international collaboration. I'd like to do a quick shout out to Dr. Gillian Velmer who has been doing the International Aphasia Choirs. I'll gather a couple of links to a couple of songs that she's helped produce with people around the world with aphasia singing together. So there's just some great efforts being done. That's why I'm excited about launching into these questions. I want to start with an introduction of SingWell. Arla, would you like to get the ball rolling on that one? Arla Good 11:09 For sure. SingWell began with my co-director, Frank Russo, and myself being inspired by that quote I shared at the beginning about singing doing something really special for these communities. We applied for a Government of Canada grant and we received what's called a Partnership grant. It really expanded well beyond just me and Frank, and it became a network of over 50 researchers, practitioners, national provincial support organizations, and it continues growing. It's really about creating a flow of information from academia to the community, and then back to academia. So understanding what research questions are coming up in these communities of interests. And what information can we, as researchers, share with these communities? That's SingWell, I'll get into the research questions. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 12:03 Let's dive in a little bit deeper. What is SingWell's primary aim? That's something you describe really well in an article we'll talk about a little later. Arla Good 12:15 So our aim is to document, to understand, group singing as a strategy, as a way to address the psychosocial well-being and communication for people who are living with communication challenges. SingWell, we're defining a communication challenge as a condition that affects an individual's ability to produce, perceive or understand speech. We're working with populations like aphasia, but also people living with hearing loss, lung disease, stuttering. I hope, I don't forget anybody. There are five populations. Parkinson's, of course. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 12:53 Perfect. So that's your primary aim. Do you want to speak to any secondary or additional goals for your project? Arla Good 13:03 The second major pillar of this grant is to advocate and share the information with these communities. So, how can we facilitate the transfer of this knowledge? We've started a TikTok channel, so you can watch videos. We have a newsletter and a website that's continuously being updated with all the new information. We want to develop best practice guides to share with these communities about what we've learned and how these types of choirs can be run. And really, just mobilize the network of partners so that we're ensuring the information is getting to the right community. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 13:35 Wow. Well, I mentioned a moment ago that there's a 2020 article that you wrote with your colleagues, Kreutz, Choma, Fiocco, and Russo that describes the SingWell project protocol. It lays out your long term goals. Do you want to add anything else to what you've said about where this project is headed? Arla Good 13:54 Sure, the big picture of this project is that we have a network of choirs that are able to address the needs of these different populations. I want the network to be dense and thriving. The home of the grant is Canada. But of course, we have partners in the states, like Jessica, and in Europe and in New Zealand. So to have this global network of choirs that people can have access to, and to advocate for a social prescription model in healthcare. Have doctors prescribing these choirs, and this network is available for doctors to see, okay, here's the closest choir to you. So, in some ways, this is a third goal of the project is to be building this case for the social prescription of singing. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 14:41 Before we go too much further, I want to acknowledge that you picked a wonderful aphasia lead, Dr. Jessica Richardson. That's your role, right? We haven't given you a chance to explain your role with SingWell. Do you want to say anything about that Jessica? Jessica Richardson 14:58 Yeah, sure. I'm still learning about my role. Overall, I know theme leaders, in general, were charged with overseeing research directions for their theme. Aphasias, the theme that I'm leader of, and then monitoring progress of research projects and the direction of that. So far, it's mostly involved some advising of team members and reviewing and giving feedback of grant applications. I'm supposed to be doing more on the social and networking end and I hope to be able to make more that more of a priority next year, but I do think this podcast counts. So thank you for that. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 15:33 Well, you did a wonderful presentation. I should be transparent, I was invited to be on the Advisory Committee of SingWell, and I got to hear your first presentation at the first project meeting where each team leader explained their focus and endeavor. I was so excited to hear the way you presented the information on aphasia, because again, we know that for some people, aphasia is not a well-known name or word. And even though this is a very educated group, and I think everybody, all the leaders know about aphasia, but it was nice to see you present and put on the table some of the challenges and importance of doing this research. One of the things that really attracted me when reading about that 2020 article is that you talk about SingWell having an ability versus disability focus early, Arla, could you elaborate on that? Arla Good 16:22 Our groups are open to anybody, regardless of their musical, vocal or hearing abilities. And we compare it often to the typical talk-based support groups that focuses on challenges and deficits. Of course, there's a time and place, these can provide a lot of benefit for people living in these communities. So, this isn't a replacement for these types of support groups, But, singing is a strength-based activity. They're working together to create a beautiful sound and there's often a performance at the end that they're very proud of. We're challenging stigma, especially in a population like aphasia, where it would seem like, oh, you have aphasia, you can't sing? But, of course they can. We're challenging that stigma of who can sing and who can't sing. We find that it's just so enjoyable for these people to be coming and doing something strength- based and feeling good. Going back to that, quote I said at the beginning, right? To feel like there's more to their identity than a diagnosis. This is what keeps them coming back. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 17:22 Beautifully said, and I can't help but think how that really connects with the life participation approach. There's no one better than Jessica, for me to throw that back out to her, and ask how she sees the connection between that. Jessica Richardson 17:37 Yes, absolutely. Their focus on ability and fighting loneliness and isolation and on social well-being is right in line with it. Because LPAA is really focusing on reengagement in life, on competence, rather than deficits, on inclusion, and also on raising the status of well-being measures to be just as important as other communication outcomes. I want to make sure we also bring up something from our Australian and New Zealand colleagues, the living successfully with aphasia framework, because it is also in line with LPAA and SingWell. I can say they have this alternative framework. They also don't want to talk about the deficit or disability. It doesn't try to ignore or even minimize the aphasia, but it emphasizes positive factors, like independence, meaningful relationships, meaningful contributions, like you know that performance. So there's just so much value and so much alignment with what Aphasia Access listeners and members really care about. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 18:44 That's a great transition for what I was thinking about next. I was very excited to see people talking about the 2018 review by Baker, Worrall, Rose and colleagues that identifies aphasia choirs as a level one treatment in the step psychological care model for managing depression in aphasia. So that's really powerful to me, and we're starting to see more research come out looking at the impact of participating in aphasia choirs. I'm really excited to see some of this initial research coming out. Maybe you can address what some of the gaps in the literature might be when it comes to group singing? And its impact on well-being. Maybe Arla, we can start with that and then Jessica, you can jump in and address specifically communication and aphasia choirs. Arla, do you want to start out? Arla Good 19:35 This is a very exciting time, like you said, there is research that is starting to come out. People are starting to study choirs as a way of achieving social well-being, psychological well-being and so the field is ripe and ready for some good robust scientific research. Most of the studies that are coming out have really small sample sizes. It's hard to get groups together, and they often lack comparison groups. So what I think SingWell is going to do is help understand the mechanisms and what is so great about singing and what singing contributes. The other thing I'd like to mention is that with SingWell, our approach is a bit unique compared to what some of the other research researchers are doing, in that we're adopting a very hands-off approach to choir. So we're letting choir directors have the autonomy to organize based on their own philosophies, their expertise, and the context of their choirs. So we call it choir in its natural habitat. And this is giving us the opportunity to explore group effects. What approach is the choir director taking and what's working, what's not working? And to have this large sample of different types of choirs, we can learn a lot from this number, this type of research project as well. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 20:54 What I really love about that is getting to know some of these wonderful colleagues through Aphasia Choirs Go Global and hearing about what their rehearsals and goals look like. There are some amazing similarities, just like saying, “You're doing that in Hungary? But we're doing that here, too.” And there are some wonderful differences. I really firmly believe that there are a variety of ways to do this very successfully, just like there are a variety of ways to run successful aphasia groups, but there's going to be some core ingredients that we need to understand better. Just before I go too far away from this, how about you? Do you want to speak to anything we need to learn in the literature about aphasia choirs? Jessica Richardson 21:35 Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm saying too much different than Arla. Arla, may want to follow up. But the main gap is that we just don't have enough evidence. And we don't have enough, like she said, solid methodology, high fidelity, to even support its efficacy to convince stakeholders, third party payers, etc. Anecdotal evidence is great, and YouTube videos that we create are also great, but it's not enough. And even more and more choirs popping up around the world, it's not enough. We need that strong research base to convince the people that need convincing. SingWell is hoping to add to that through its pilot grants, through its methodology that they share for people to use. And I'm hopeful that other organizations, you know, like Aphasia Choirs Go Global, can link up at some point with saying, “Well, I'm excited about communities like that that are also supportive of researching choirs.” Arla, think I saw you're wanting to follow up. Arla Good 22:31 I just wanted to add to something that Ellen had said about the power and diversity and having these different perspectives. And another goal of SingWell is to create, and it's up on the website already, it's a work in progress, it's going to continue growing, but a menu of options for choir directors who are looking to start a choir like this. Like if you want this kind of goal, here are some tips. So, if it's a social choir, you might want to configure the room in a circle. But if you have musical goals, maybe you want to separate your sopranos, your altos, tenors, and your bass. It's not one prescribed method. It's a menu of items that we're hoping we can through, this diversity of our network, that we can clarify for people who are trying to start a choir for themselves. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 23:19 I love that because I can hear in my head right now, Aura Kagan saying over and over again that the life participation approach is not a prescriptive approach. But rather, you're always looking at what is the best fit for your needs. Jessica, your head is nodding, so do you want to add anything? Jessica Richardson 23:37 It's a way to shift your whole entire perspective and your framework. And that's what I love about it. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 23:44 We'll just go back to that 2020 article for a moment because I really liked that article. You and your authors describe four measures of well-being and there are potential neuroendocrinological, that's really a lot of syllables in here, but I'll try to say it again, neuroendocrinological underpinnings, Arla Good The hormones--- Ellen Bernstein-Ellis Oh, that's better, thank you, the hormones, too. Could you just take a moment and please share what these four measures of well-being and their hormonal underpinnings might be? Arla Good 24:11 For sure. The first one is connection, the connectedness outcome. So we're asking self-report measures of how connected people feel. But we're also measuring oxytocin, which is a hormone that's typically associated with social bonding. The second measure is stress. And again, we're asking self-report measures, but we're also looking at cortisol, which is a hormone associated with stress. The third measure is pain. And this one's a little bit more complex, because we're measuring pain thresholds. Really, it sounds scary, but what we do is apply pressure to the finger and people tell us when it feels uncomfortable. So it's actually well before anyone's experiencing pain. But we're thinking that this might be a proxy for beta endorphin release. So that's the underpinning there. And then the last outcome is mood. This is also a self-report measure. And one of the types of analyses that we're running is we want to see what's contributing to an improved mood. Is it about the cortisol? Is it about just like deep breathing and feeling relaxed? Is it that or is there something special happening when they feel the rush of oxytocin and social connectedness? The jury's still out. These are super preliminary data at this point, especially with oxytocin, there's so much to learn. But those are some of the hormones, the sociobiological underpinnings that we're exploring. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 25:31 That makes for some really exciting research and the way you frame things, SingWell is supporting grants, maybe you could comment on how its biopsychosocial framework influences the methods and outcome measures that you want to adopt. Arla Good 25:48 Sure, we do provide guidelines and suggestions for measures. Jessica alluded to this. We have it all up on the website, if anyone else wants to run a study like this. And then we have some that we're requiring of any study that's going to be funded through SingWell. And this is so we can address this small sample size problem in the literature. So the grant runs for six more years. It's a seven year grant. And at the end, we're going to merge all the data together for one mega study. We want to have some consistency across the studies, so we do have some that are required. And then we have this typical SingWell design. We're offering support for our research team, from what a project could look like. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 26:28 Well, this podcast typically has a wonderful diverse demographic, but it includes researchers. and clinical researchers who collaborate. So, let's take a moment and have you describe the grant review process and the dates for the next cycle, just in case people want to learn more. Arla Good 26:45 Sure, so we are accepting grants from SingWell members. So the first step is to become a SingWell member. There is an application process on the website. We have an executive committee that reviews the applications twice a year, the next one is in scheduled for November. There's some time to get the application together. Once you're in as a member, the application for receiving funding is actually quite simple. It's basically just an explanation of the project and then it will undergo a review process. Jessica is actually one of our reviewers, so she can speak to what it was like to be a reviewer, Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 27:21 That would be great because, Jessica, when you and I chatted about it briefly, I've never heard a reviewer be so excited about being supportive in this process. So please share a little bit more because I thought your perspective was so refreshing and positive. Jessica Richardson 27:36 I have to say too, I have definitely benefited from having some amazing reviewers in my own lifetime. I definitely have to point out one who was so impactful, Mary Boyle, her review, it was so thorough, and it was so intense, but it elevated one of my first endeavors into discourse analysis to just like a different level. And just the way that she treated it as a way to help shape, she was so invested, in just making sure that we were the best product out there. I learned what the world needed to learn. I definitely learned a lot from that experience and from other reviewers like her that I've benefited from. As a reviewer, whenever I review anything, I try to keep that same spirit. So when I was doing SingWell reviews, I made sure that I revisited the parent grant. I did a really good, thorough reread. I provided feedback and critiques from the lens of how does this fit with SingWell's aims? And, how can it be shaped to serve those aims if it isn't quite there yet? So it's never like, “Ah, no, this is so far off”, it was just like, “Oh, where can we make a connection to help it fit?” Then trying to provide a review that would be a recipe for success, if not for this submission cycle, then for the next. And as a submitter, even though I mean, we didn't have a meeting to like all take this approach. But I felt that the feedback that I received was really in that same spirit. And so I love feedback in general. I don't always love the rejection that comes with it. But I do love stepping outside of myself and learning from that different perspective. And I've really just felt that this thing while reviewers were invested, and were really just interested in shaping submissions to success, Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 29:24 That's really worthwhile, right? So you get something, even if you're not going to get funding. You still get to come away with something that's valuable, which is that feedback. We've been talking about measures and I'm really interested in that as a topic. Jessica, could you take a moment and share a little bit about how SingWell's pre/post measures are being adopted for aphasia? We all know that's some of the challenges. Sometimes, some of the measures that we use for mood, connectivity, or stress are not always aphasia-friendly. So what does that process look like? Jessica Richardson 29:59 I will say they did their homework at the top end, even before the proposal was submitted. Really having you on the advisory board, and I was able to give some feedback on some of the measures. Some of the measures they've already selected were specific to aphasia. For Parkinson's disease, there are Parkinson's disease specific measures and for stuttering, specific measures. And for aphasia, they picked ones that are already aphasia-friendly. What I was super excited about too, is that they included discourse without me asking. It was already there. I think we helped build it to be a better discourse sample and we've added our own. So it's already in there as their set of required and preferred measures. But the other thing is that the investigator, or investigators, have a lot of latitude, according to your knowledge of the clinical population that you're working with, to add outcomes that you feel are relevant. That's a pretty exciting aspect of getting these pilot funds. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 30:58 So there's both some core suggested measures, but there's a lot of latitude for making sure that you're picking measures that will capture and are appropriate to your particular focus of your projects. That's great. Absolutely. Jessica Richardson 31:09 I definitely feel that if there were any big issue that we needed to bring up, we would just talk to Arla and Frank, and they would be receptive. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 31:20 I've been very intrigued and interested in attempts to measure social connectedness as an outcome measure. You speak about it in your article, about the value of social bonding and the way music seems to be a really good mechanism to efficiently create social bonding. Is there something about choir that makes this factor, this social connectedness, different from being part of other groups? How are you going to even capture this this factor? Who wants to take that one? Arla Good 31:50 I do, I can talk, we can do another podcast on this one. Jessica Richardson 31:55 It's my turn, Arla. I'm just kidding (laughter). Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 32:01 You can both have a turn. You go first, Arla, And then Jessica, I think you will probably add, Jessica Richardson 32:04 I'm totally kidding (laughter). Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 32:06 Go ahead, Arla. Arla Good 32:07 This is what I did my dissertation on. I truly believe in the power of group music making. So singing is just an easy, accessible, scalable way to get people to move together. It's consistent with an evolutionary account that song and dance was used by small groups to promote social bonding and group resiliency. I've seen the term collective effervescence in these types of writings. When we moved together, it was like a replacement for in our great ape ancestors, they were one on one grooming, picking up the nits in each other's fur. Human groups became too large and too complex to do one on one ways of social bonding. And so we needed to develop a way to bond larger groups rapidly. And the idea here is that movement synchrony, so moving together in precise time, was one way of connecting individuals, creating a group bond. Singing is just a fun way of doing that. I've been studying this for about 15 years and trying to understand. We've pared it down, right down to just tapping along with a metronome, and seeing these types of cooperation outcomes and feelings of social bonding, connectedness. I do think there's something special, maybe not singing specifically, but activities that involve movement synchrony. We could talk about drumming, we could talk about dance, I think that there is a special ingredient in these types of activities that promote social bonds. Jessica Richardson 33:37 There's been some of us even looking at chanting, there's research about that as well. Arla Good We should do a SingWell study on chanting! Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 33:43 Jessica, what else do you want to add about what is important about capturing social connectedness? Or, how do we capture social connectedness? Jessica Richardson 33:53 I think I'll answer the first part, which is, what is special about thinking about it and capturing it. It's something that we've slowly lost over decades and generations, the communal supports. Our communities are weakened, we're more spread out. It's also a way of bringing something back that has been so essential for so long. We've weakened it with technology, with just all the progress that we've made. It's a way to bring something that is very primitive and very essential back. So, that doesn't totally answer your question, though. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 34:31 When we think about the isolation related to aphasia and the loss of friendship, and some of the wonderful research that's coming out about the value and impact of friendship on aphasia, and then, you think about choirs and some of this research--I believe choir is identified as the number one most popular adult hobby/activity. I think more people are involved in choirs as an adult. It's not the only meaningful activity, but it's a very long standing, well developed one, Jessica Richardson 35:03 We have to figure out how to get the people though who will not touch a choir with a 10 foot pole? Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 35:08 Well, we will continue to do the work on the other groups, right, that suits them very well. You know, be it a book club, or a gardening group, or a pottery class, or many, many, many other choices. Jessica Richardson 35:21 Or a bell choir? Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 35:24 Bell choirs are great, too. Do either of you want to speak to what type of measures captures social connectedness or what you're using, or suggesting people try to use, for SingWell projects? Jessica Richardson 35:38 I think Arla already captured some of those with those markers that she was talking about earlier. Hormonal markers. But the self-report questionnaires, and that perspective. There's other biomarkers that can very easily be obtained, just from your spirit. So I think that's going in the right direction, for sure. Arla Good 35:59 Yeah, we've also looked at behavioral measures in the past like strategic decision making games, economic decision making games, and just seeing if people trust each other, and whether they're willing to share with each other. We've asked people how attractive they think the other people are. Questions like this that are capturing the formation of a group, whether they're willing to share with their in-group. It's a question of in-group and out-group, and what are some of the effects of the in-group. Jessica Richardson 36:26 And we're definitely exploring too, because we do a lot of neurophysiological recording in my lab. Is there a place for EEG here? Is there a place for fNIRS, especially with fNIRS, because they can actually be doing these things. They can be participating in choir, we can be measuring things in real time. While they're doing that, with the fNIRS-like sports packs, so sorry, fNIRS is functional near-infrared spectroscopy in case some of the listeners aren't sure. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 36:52 I needed help with that one too. Thank you. I'm thinking about some of the work done by Tom Sather that talks about the sense of flow and its contribution to eudaimonic well-being, right? I think that's a key piece of what SingWell is looking at as well. It's exciting to look at all these different measures, and all these different pillars that you are presenting today. And if people want to find out more about SingWell, do you want to say something about your website, what they might find if they were to go there? Arla Good 37:25 Yes, go to the website, SingWell.org, pretty easy to remember. And on the website, you'll find all the resources to run a research study, to apply to be a member. We have resources for choir directors who are looking to start their own choir, we have opportunities to get involved as research participants if you're someone living with aphasia, or other communication challenges. There's lots of opportunities to get involved on the website. And you can sign up for our newsletter and receive the updates as they come and check out our website. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 37:57 That's great. I certainly have been watching it develop. And I think it has a lot of really helpful resources. I appreciate the work that's been put into that. How do people get involved in the SingWell project? You mentioned earlier about becoming a member. Is there anything else you want to add about becoming engaged with SingWell? Arla Good 38:18 I think the ways to become involved, either becoming a member or starting a choir using the resources, or like I said, signing up for the newsletter just to stay engaged. And as a participant, of course, doing the surveys or signing up for a choir if you're one of the participants called. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 38:35 Thank you. I'm was wondering if you'd share with the listeners any sample projects that are underway. Arla Good 38:46 For sure. So we have five funded studies this year. We have one ChantWell, which Jessica spoke about, assessing the benefits of chanting for breathing disorders. That's taking place in Australia. The effects of online group singing program for older adults with breathing disorders on their lung health, functional capacity, cognition, quality of life, communication skills and social inclusion. That is in Quebec, Canada. The third study, the group singing to support well-being and communication members of Treble Tremors. That's a Parkinson's choir taking place in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The fourth is how important is the group in group singing, so more of a theoretical question looking at group singing versus individual singing, an unbiased investigation of group singing benefits for well-being and that's also in Quebec. And then last but not least, I saved it for last, is our very own Jessica Richardson's group singing to improve communication and well-being for persons with aphasia or Parkinson's disease. So I thought I might let Jessica share, if she's open to sharing some of what the research study will entail. Jessica Richardson 39:53 Oh, yes, thank you. When we first started our neuro choir, I had envisioned it as being an aphasia choir. And we had so much need in the community, from people with other types of brain injury. Our Parkinson's Disease Association, too, has really been reaching out ever since I've moved here. They have a group actually, they're called the Movers and Shakers, which I really love. So, we have a pretty healthy aphasia cohort of people who are interested, who also, you know, taking a break and only doing things virtually if they are interested, you know, since COVID. And then we have our Parkinson's cohort here as well, the Movers and Shakers, were following the suggested study design, it's a 12 week group singing intervention. They have suggestions for different outcome measures at different timescales, we're following that and adding our own outcome measures that we also feel are relevant. So we have those measures for communication and well-being, including the well-being biomarkers through the saliva. As she mentioned, already, we have latitude for the choir director, like who we want to pick and what she or he wants to do. We already have that person picked out. And we already know, and have all of that stuff figured out. There is some guidance, but again, flexibility for our session programming. And we have the choices over the homework programming, as well. We are really looking at this choir in the wild, and looking at those outcomes with their measures. So we're excited about it. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 41:22 I think you've just thought of a great name for a future aphasia choir, which is a “neuro choir choir in the wild” Jessica Richardson 41:30 Well, out here, we're a choir in the wild, wild west. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 41:34 There you go. Absolutely. What have been some of the most surprising findings of the benefits of singing so far that have come in through the SingWell project? Either of you want to take that on? Arla Good 41:46 I don't know if it's the most surprising, but it's definitely the most exciting. I'm excited to continue unpacking what's happening with oxytocin, I think it's a pretty exciting hormone, it's pretty hot right now. It's typically associated with being like a love hormone. They call it associated with sex, and it's associated with mother-infant bonding. If we can find a way that's not mother-infant or pair bonding to release oxytocin, that's very exciting. If group singing is one of those ways to promote this sense of “I don't know where I end and you begin, and we're one” and all those loving feelings. As Jessica mentioned, the missing piece, and how we relate to each other in a society, choir might be an answer to that. I'm really excited about the oxytocin outcome measure. Again, it's still very early, I don't want to say definitively what's happening, but it's a pretty exciting piece. Jessica Richardson 42:45 I have a future doctoral student that's going to be working on this. That is the part she's most interested in as well.. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 42:52 So there are some really good things that, hopefully, will continue to tell us what some of these benefits are and that it's important to fund and connect people to these types of activities. You said, this is like year one or two of a 6 year project, was that right? Or is it seven year? Arla Good 43:09 It's seven year. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 43:10 So what is your hope for the future of the SingWell project? Arla Good 43:15 The secondary goals would be the hope for the future, of actually creating change in the communities and getting people to think outside the box of providing care. Is there a choir that can be prescribed nearby? Is there a way to train these choir directors so that they have the correct training for this specific population? So drawing from the knowledge from speech- language therapy, from choir direction, from music therapy- Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 43:42 Music therapy, right. Arla Good 43:43 Of course, of course. So creating an accreditation program and training choir directors to lead choirs like this, and having this army of choir directors around the world that are doing this. So, this is a big goal. But that's what I hope to see. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 44:00 That's fantastic. And I think there's some researchers who are really working hard at looking at protocols and asking these questions. And I know, I've been inspired by some of the work that Ali Talmage is doing in New Zealand that's looking at some of these questions. And, Jessica, do you want to add what's your hope is as aphasia lead? Or, what you're thinking about for the SingWell project that you're excited about? Jessica Richardson 44:21 We have to generate that evidence that we need and mentioning again, those 10 foot pole people, to reach out to let people know that choirs aren't just for people who think that they can sing. We definitely have had some very energetic and enthusiastic choir members who think that they can sing and cannot, and they're still showing up. Maybe you're the one who thinks that choirs aren't for you. If we can generate enough energy, inertia, and evidence to convince those that it might be worth giving a try. I think some of them are going to be surprised that they enjoy it and “oh, I can sing.” So I think that to me is a future hoped for outcome. And then again, seeing it spread out to other gardening groups, other yoga groups, all these other things that we know are happening within Aphasia Access members and beyond to see, okay, there's this methodology. This is what's used to study something like this, let's apply it also so that its efficacy data for these other approaches that we know and we see can be helpful, but we don't have enough proof to have someone prescribe it and to get those stakeholders involved. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 45:33 Yes. And we talked about the importance of some of the work that's being done with mental health and aphasia and how some of the information that you're pursuing could really tie in and help us support and get more work in that area as well. So really exciting. I can't believe we have to wrap up already. I agree with you all, that we could just keep talking on this one. But let's just end on this note, I would like to find out from both of you. If you had to pick just one thing that we need to achieve urgently as a community of providers and professionals, what would that one thing be? What would you like to speak to? At the end of this discussion we've had today and Arla, you get to go first again. Arla Good 46:15 The one thing we need to achieve urgently is to find a way to address people's needs in a more holistic way. And to see the human as a whole, that it's not just this piece and this piece and this piece, but all of it together? And how can we do that? How can we communicate better as practitioners, as researchers, so that we can address these needs more holistically? Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 46:36 Thank you. Thank you. And Jessica, what would you like to say? Jessica Richardson 46:41 I could just say ditto. I totally agree. So the end. But I think the other part is from a clinician standpoint. What I hear most from colleagues that are out there in the wild, and former students, is that they want the “How to” info which is perfect, because, SingWell has a knowledge mobilization aim, and the exact aim of that is to develop and share best practice guides, which you know, are already mentioned, choir sustainability guides, how to fund it, how to keep it going. Really important. And they're going to update these regularly. It's going to be available in lots of languages. So that's something I'm especially excited for, for our community, because I know so many people who want to start a choir, but it feels too big and intimidating, and maybe they don't feel like they have the musical chops. But this will really help them get over that hump to get started and will address that need. And that desire, that's already there, in a big way. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis 47:42 Thank you. I'm so appreciative that you both made this happen today. It was complicated schedules. And I just really, really appreciate want to thank you for being our guests for this podcast. It was so much fun. I'm excited to follow the SingWell project over the next seven years and see what continues to grow and develop. So for more information on Aphasia Access, and to access our growing library of materials, please go to www.aphasiaaccess.org And if you have an idea for a future podcast series topic, just email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org And thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. Arla, Jessica, thank you so much. Thank you. References and Resources UNM Neuro Choir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQuamJgTVj8&list=PLy586K9YzXUzyMXOOQPNz3RkfRZRqtR-L&index=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guU_uRaFbHI&list=PLy586K9YzXUzyMXOOQPNz3RkfRZRqtR-L&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4_0Xd7HNoM&list=PLy586K9YzXUzyMXOOQPNz3RkfRZRqtR-L&index=7 www.singwell.org Good, A., Kreutz, G., Choma, B., Fiocco, A., Russo, F., & World Health Organization. (2020). The SingWell project protocol: the road to understanding the benefits of group singing in older adults. Public Health Panorama, 6(1), 141-146. Good, A., & Russo, F. A. (2022). Changes in mood, oxytocin, and cortisol following group and individual singing: A pilot study. Psychology of Music, 50(4), 1340-1347.

Episode #92: Transforming Person-Centered Care Through LPAA Knowledge: A Conversation with Melinda Corwin and Brooke Hallowell

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2022 23:05

Interviewer info Lyssa Rome is a speech-language pathologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, where she facilitates groups. She owns an LPAA-focused private practice and specializes in working with people with aphasia, dysarthria, and other neurogenic communication impairments. She has worked in acute hospital, skilled nursing, and continuum of care settings. Prior to becoming an SLP, Lyssa was a public radio journalist, editor, and podcast producer. Guest bios Melinda Corwin is a university distinguished professor and clinical supervisor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, where she has worked since 1994. Prior to her university position, she worked as a hospital speech-language pathologist. She directs the Stroke & Aphasia Recovery (STAR) Program, a community outreach program in Lubbock, Texas, for persons with aphasia and their families. Brooke Hallowell is professor and dean of health sciences at Springfield College. Brooke is a specialist in neurogenic communication disorders, and has been working clinically, teaching future clinicians, and engaging in research on aphasia for 25 years. She is known for transnational research collaboration, academic and clinical program development, and global health programming in underserved regions of the world. A pioneer in using eyetracking and pupillometry to study cognition and language in adults, she holds patents on associated technology. Professor Hallowell is the author of Aphasia and Other Acquired Neurogenic Language Disorders: A Guide for Clinical Excellence. Listener Take-aways In today's episode you will: Identify key differences between clinician-centered care and person-centered care. Understand gaps in current training regarding the Life Participation Approach. Learn about the Aphasia Access knowledge course. Edited show notes Lyssa Rome Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Lyssa Rome. I'm a speech language pathologist on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, and I see clients with aphasia and other neurogenic communication impairments in my LPAA focused private practice. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm pleased to be joining the podcast as today's host for an episode that will feature Melinda Corwin and Brooke Halliwell. We'll be discussing Aphasia Access's new online project, Person-Centered Care: The Life Participation Approach to Aphasia Knowledge Course, which debuts this month, I had the pleasure of playing a small role in this project as the narrator for the course. Melinda Corwin is a University Distinguished Professor and clinical supervisor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, where she has worked since 1994. Prior to her university position, she worked as a hospital speech language pathologist. She directs the Stroke and Aphasia Recovery, or STAR, program, a community outreach program in Lubbock, Texas, for persons with aphasia and their families. Brooke Hallowell is a professor and dean of health sciences at Springfield College. Brooke is a specialist in neurogenic communication disorders and has been working clinically, teaching future clinicians, and engaging in research on aphasia for 25 years. She is known for transnational research collaboration, academic and clinical program development, and global health programming in underserved regions of the world. A pioneer in using eye tracking and pupillometry to study cognition and language and adults, she holds patents on associated Technology. Professor Halliwell is the author of Aphasia and Other Acquired Neurogenic Language Disorders: A Guide for Clinical Excellence, Second Edition. Thank you for joining me. I wanted to start with an “aha moment,” anything that stands out for you in terms of the Life Participation Approach. Who would like to start? Melinda Corwin So, at our university, I got to meet a man who was in his 60s, he had survived a stroke two years prior, he was single and living in a long term care facility. He didn't have any family locally. He came to our university community outreach program for people with aphasia. And after about six months of being with us, he confided to his student clinician one day that he wondered if he could work out a payment plan to pay for throat surgery to fix his problems with speech and communication. And we realized that he did not understand the nature of aphasia. He actually thought there was a surgery available to fix or cure it, and that because he was low income, he didn't have the money to afford it. That was my aha moment, where I realized that we had failed him, our system had failed him. This man deserved to have access to his health information regarding his diagnosis, his condition, his prognosis, and he didn't get that as part of his ability to participate in his life and in his health care plan. And I knew we could do better. And so I found colleagues and friends through Aphasia Access, and I'm really hoping and working towards a systemic change for that reason. Lyssa Rome Thank you. Brooke, what about you? Brooke Hallowell Well, I continue to have aha moments. For for me, one that stands out relates to my role as an educator and a person who teaches courses in aphasia and author to support learning and future clinicians who will be working with people who have aphasia. It was hard for many of us who were raised with a focus on medical and impairment-based, deficit-focused models of aphasia, to integrate our appreciation for foci on life participation with how we were taught, and may have previously taught and mentored our students. It's as if, for many of us, the recognition of how essential it is for us to embrace life participation was there long before we had a good grasp on how to integrate life participation holistically into our educational content. We wanted to make sure our students knew about medical, neuroscientific, neuropsychological, psycholinguistic, etc., aspects of aphasia, and we wanted to make sure they knew about the theoretical underpinnings of aphasia-related content. So if you think about what we can cover in a course, in our limited time with future clinicians, we felt and still do just never have sufficient time to delve into some of the really critical life participation content. So for me it kind of aha moment. Although I gotta say it wasn't. So sudden as a flash at a single moment in time, maybe an aha phase. It relates to the importance of helping current and future clinicians embrace that we all need to be able to hold several conceptual frameworks about aphasia in our minds at the same time, and that by understanding and appreciating multiple perspectives, we didn't have to necessarily choose one over the other. We didn't have to argue about which models were better than others, or whether working on impairment level deficits was somehow not essential to life participation. Once that realization was clear within me, I found that it was easier to integrate life participation and the ICF framework through our all of our discussions and teaching about aphasia and other disorders as well. Many of us invested in life participation approaches have supported one another in that sort of integration of multiple frameworks in our thinking, and in our work. Aphasia Access has been a powerful force in that regard. The mutual support to hold life participation paramount, no matter what are other theoretical perspectives, and medical or non-medical orientations. Lyssa Rome Thank you. I think that leads really nicely, actually, into this topic of the knowledge course that that Aphasia Access has developed and that's debuting this month. So can you tell us a little bit more about the project and how it began? Melinda Corwin The project began with the plight of both people with aphasia and speech language pathologist. Of course, SLPs know that people with aphasia want to participate in life, which means their current life as a patient, or in their life when they go back home and their life years into the future. The plight for speech language pathologists is that they face enormous time limitations, insurance reimbursement constraints, they have increased workload across all the different healthcare systems and settings. And so providing true person-centered care, health equity, and personalized goals for each person that we serve can feel almost impossible. This challenge was so pervasive that it appeared in a comprehensive report written by Nina Simmons-Mackie in 2018, called Aphasia in North America, and it's available from Aphasia Access. In her report, she listed the gap areas and so we really wanted to focus on gap area number five, which is related to insufficient attention to life participation across the continuum of care. And also gap area number six, which is related to insufficient training and protocols or guidelines to aid speech language pathologists and other health care professionals in the implementation of this participation-oriented intervention across the continuum of care. So the year that her report came out a team of aphasia clinicians, researchers, and program providers mobilized to invent a product to concretely try to address these gap areas. We wanted to offer busy clinicians and healthcare professionals training that they wouldn't have to travel to, and something that was more than a webinar. We did a lot of research to produce the learning experience, and we tried to provide the most contemporary, interactive learning methods for adults. Our beta testers have said that they have found the course to be different and highly valuable. Lyssa Rome So I think obviously, there's this big need. And I'm wondering, Brooke, maybe if you could speak a little bit more to how this person-centered care approach can support the goals of increasing life participation, and maybe differentiate a little bit between clinician-centered care and person-centered care for people with aphasia? Brooke Hallowell Sure. In clinician-centered care, the clinician is really in charge of all aspects of intervention. The clinician is the boss. The clinician decides what will be assessed and how it will be assessed. The clinician interprets the assessment results. And from that, sets goals for the person with aphasia. And the clinician decides on the treatment methods that will be used to reach those goals. And that's very different from person-centered care, where the person and the clinician are collaborators from the start, they work together to determine priorities for what that person really wants to be able to do in life and how communication affects what a person wants to do. In person-centered care, the person's priorities are really the primary focus of assessment and goal setting and every aspect of intervention. And the person and the clinician set goals collaboratively, often including other people that are important in that person's life. And together, they collaborate in selecting what goals will get prioritized, and what the context is for working on those goals that's most relevant to the person. So the person's priorities are at the heart of our work in person-centered care. We clinicians collaborate with the person, and those people who are important to the person, at every stage of goal setting, assessment, treatment planning, etc. Lyssa Rome So thinking about person-centered care, I'm wondering if you can describe a little bit more about the goals of this knowledge course and how they relate to person-centered care. Brooke Hallowell Sure, the overarching goal is to provide learners with foundational, verifiable knowledge that's critical for providing person-centered care. Person-centered care is a universal and global need for people who have aphasia, and those who are important in their lives. The Life Participation Approach is fundamental to this wish that clinicians worldwide have for people with aphasia. That's increased participation in life regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, national origin, geographic location, religious or other beliefs—regardless of any individual differences. This course is the first in a series. The knowledge course consists of eight online, self-paced interactive modules, each of which contains three specific learning objectives. The knowledge course is a standardized way that clinicians—from novices to experienced clinicians—can be formally recognized as a Life Participation Approach professional. When a person successfully completes the course, they earn an eBadge, a certificate, and an optional 2.5 continuing education credits for those who are members of the American Speech Language Hearing Association. Next year, Aphasia Access will release the second in the series: the practice course. That course will build on the fundamentals of the knowledge course, passing that course will lead to the award of a second badge focused on implementation strategies across care settings. Every course module is designed to provide practical suggestions, graphics, dynamic video clips, and interactive and reflective activities to help key concepts come alive. Lyssa Rome Tell us a little bit more about the content team. Who worked on this badge project? Melinda Corwin This is Melinda and it's been an honor to serve as the content team manager for the project. For the knowledge course we had eight members on our team. Our lead author is Nina Simmons-Mackie, who's a professor emeritus at Southeastern Louisiana University. Of course, Brooke Hallowell, who as you said, is professor and dean of health sciences at Springfield College. Brooke also secured a grant to help with funding portions of this project and we could not have done it without her. And our other team members include Katarina Haley, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she directs the UNC Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders. Mary Hildebrand is a recently retired associate professor and program director of the occupational therapy department at Massachusetts General Hospital or MGH Institute of Health Professions. Jacqueline Laures-Gore is an associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at Georgia State University. We have Marjorie Nicholas, who's the chair of the communication sciences and disorders department at MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. And last but not least, our project manager Kathryn Shelley. She is co-founder and current grants director of the Aphasia Center of West Texas, and she's also a former president of Aphasia Access, and this course would not be possible without Kathryn's guidance. Lyssa Rome Tell us a little bit more about what the benefits are of having this eBadge or taking this course. Brooke Hallowell Sure, this is Brooke. The badge is going to convey to others that the participant has a firm foundation of person-centered care, which is, as we know, at the heart of the life participation approach. So benefits include delivering equitable, person-centered care through collaborative goal setting and intervention, improving success for people with aphasia, and those who care about them and helping specific care settings meet communication access mandates. When an eBadge is displayed in an email signature, or on social media, there'll be a clickable link. And that will help employers, or colleagues, or the people that we serve, even friends and family, link to a full description of what it means to have earned that eBadge. Lyssa Rome Great. Many of the professionals who are involved in Aphasia Access are experts in the life participation approach. So why would they want to take this course to document their knowledge? Melinda Corwin This is Melinda. Well, by devoting personal time, energy, and resources to earn an eBadge, it's an efficient way to let others know that we share a common goal to provide patient-centered care across the continuum of care. And regardless of what setting a particular professional is in, whether they're in an acute care hospital, inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient rehab, home health, or community-level aphasia program, or group, these eBadge holders will be able to identify each other. I'm a university professor and director of an aphasia community outreach program. I've been trying to teach and use the Life Participation Approach for several years, and I've wanted to spread the word with other speech language pathologists. So by adding this symbol to my email signature, I hope that colleagues will click on the eBadge and see what I've been up to. My decision to display the eBadge is my way to help make system change possible, I envision a day in which all healthcare providers will aspire to provide patient-centered care, essentially from the ambulance ride to the emergency center, all the way to the person's return to home and community. Lyssa Rome The benefits of this seem really clear. But will this eBadge or certificate be required for a clinician to to employ a person-centered or life participation approach to aphasia? Brooke? Brooke Hallowell Oh, no, definitely not. I have to chime in on that. We know that many clinicians are deeply engaged in this approach. And many have adhered to this approach for years and in ways that may not have been labeled expressly as life participation approach. Still, based on gaps that we know exists in our current healthcare and community settings, we hope that the eBadge will really help clinicians showcase their knowledge to employers and peers and the people they serve. Engaging in the course itself can provide support for students and clinicians who want to consider life participation constructs, perhaps more deeply or in new ways. And as Melinda was just intimating, it's also a means of confirming shared values about life participation amongst us. Lyssa Rome So when people have completed this course, how is that displayed as an eBadge? Melinda, maybe you can take that one? Melinda Corwin Yes. So it'll be in the person's email signature line, if they choose to place it there. And the eBadge is from a company called Credly, which enables anyone to click on the badge icon and be taken to a website that explains exactly what training the person completed to earn that eBadge. Brooke Hallowell Yeah, and it's so easy to register for the course, just go to the Aphasia Access website. That's www.aphasiaaccess.org. From there, you'll see the link to the knowledge course on the homepage. And that will take you to our new Aphasia Access Academy, which is the new home for all of our educational experiences. There is a cost. The cost for Aphasia Access members is $129. And for non-members, it's $179. And if you're not already an Aphasia Access member, your enrollment in the course includes a one year, first-time membership. So it's really a wonderful way to experience so many benefits of our Aphasia Access membership and network. We have our Brag and Steal events, the distinguished lecture series, shared free resources, there's a discount registration for the Leadership Summit, and there are also on-demand pre-recorded webinars. So all of that comes along with that membership. Lyssa Rome Well, I'm really excited about this course. And I appreciate your sharing more details about it. And I'm wondering if there are any last thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners? Brooke Hallowell Yeah, this is Brooke, I would just I've been reflecting as we've had this conversation today about how amazing it was to work with this collaborative team in developing the course. You know, I think all of us who have been involved in this from the beginning felt like we were already expert in the life participation approach. There isn't that much more to learn. But in fact, there was a tremendous amount of dynamic discussion, argumentation, passionate discussion about the various aspects of the life participation and how to portray it, how to talk about it, and what terms to use and not use. So I feel like I grew tremendously from the process of the course development. And I think a lot of that, I certainly hope that a lot of that comes out to people who participate in the course. So even if you think you're already expert in it, I'd still recommend that you give it a try for all the reasons that we talked about, and including that there's always more for all of us to learn about this approach. Lyssa Rome So true. Brooke Hallowell and Melinda Corwin, thank you for being our guests on this podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access and to access our growing library of materials, go to www.aphasiaaccess.org. For a more user-friendly experience, members can sign up for the Aphasia Access Academy, which is free and provides resources searchable by topic or author. If you have an idea for a future podcast series topic, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. References and Resources http://www.aphasiaaccessacademy.org/ www.AphasiaAccess.org/knowledgebadge/

Marissa Rocheleau Discusses Entrepreneurialism

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2022 33:52

Marissa Rocheleau, M.A., CCC-SLP is a licensed speech language pathologist and owner of Linguabilities, a private telepractice company, and Telepractice Connect, the first all-tele membership site. Seeing the next way to deliver therapy online, Marissa refocused her company in 2017 to serve clients all around the country using cutting-edge telepractice technologies for both children and adults. Making sure these services are accessible and high quality for all families is what really drives her. Marissa received her Bachelors degree from Indiana University in 2010, double majoring in Psychology and Speech and Hearing Sciences with a minor in Linguistics. In 2012, she completed a Masters degree in Speech Pathology at Indiana University. Marissa has worked in schools and private practice, specializing in telepractice and evaluations since 2014. She is licensed in eight states in speech pathology and holds the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). In her free time, Marissa enjoys spending time with her dogs, Petri and Bunsen, crafting miniatures, and cheating on crossword puzzles. www.linguabilities.com www.facebook.com/linguabilities You can listen to this episode at: www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com/telepractice-today-podcast

#084: Naturalistic Communication Training with Dr. Cindy Gevarter

Autism Outreach

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2022 31:38

There is so much opportunity for communication in our students' natural environments. But how can we use this intentionally and build our therapy plan around it? Dr. Cindy Gevarter, BCBA-D and assistant professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of New Mexico, joins me to discuss real world applications for naturalistic communication training in your therapy sessions.Assessments:When beginning therapy sessions for students, assessments are important for understanding students skills, goals, and needs. Dr. Gevarter listed several of her preferred assessments for naturalistic communication training that we have talked about on the show many times!Communication MatrixVB-MAPPEarly Start Denver ModelPlanning:Naturalistic communication is not random play, when preparing for a session keep in mind opportunities, routines, and priorities that are typical for your student. But you can't just wing it. Dr. Gevarter recommends planning with an Activity Matrix: skills and goals associated with activities and embedded strategies. Follow through with developmental extension, parent coaching, and an environment set up for natural communication. A lot of the strategies and planning we discuss apply directly to 1 to 1 sessions, but Dr. Gevarter elaborates on how to plan for dyads and group settings by intentional peer to peer interaction or typical routines such as circle time or an art activity.Data:In a natural environment, we can't pause a student while we record data. Dr. Gevarter suggests simplifying your data for quick observations. You may try using a rating scale or other shorthands that you can understand when noting responses, and goal planning. Remember that this is informal data collection used to inform your sessions, don't overcomplicate it!Why Natural Environment?I often find parents in in-home sessions surprised that our therapy isn't taking place at a table with structured activities. While there is a time and a place for the table, there is a major benefit to utilizing a student's natural environment. When participating in natural play or natural environment activities, students are seeing and receiving natural reinforcement from their communication. They can actually see and experience the benefit of communication.#autism #speechtherapyWhat's Inside:How can we adapt the natural environment of our sessions for communication?How to use an embedded approach for natural communication.Using naturalistic training in 1:1, dyads, and group sessions.Real world opportunities for your next therapy session.How to simplify data collection for observation in a natural setting.What are preferred assessments for naturalistic communication training?Mentioned In This Episode: Cindy Gevarter, Ph.D., BCBA-D Collaborative Autism GrantProject SCENESABA Speech: HomeStart Communicating Today – Waitlist – ABA SpeechHelp Me Find My Voice – EVERGREEN – ABA Speech

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#041 - How I Encourage Early Language Development with Leanne Sherred, CCC-SLP, founder of Expressable

The Mom Manual

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2022 41:24

Use code MOMMANUAL25 for 25% off of our course "Small Talk" on early language development [https://resources.expressable.io/] Leanne calls Austin, Texas home but studied Speech and Hearing Sciences at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and gained her Master's in Speech-language pathology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She has worked in pediatric outpatient clinics, schools, early intervention, and home health. Leanne is currently the President and Founder of Expressable online speech therapy, a company that envisions a modern and research-backed way for anyone who needs speech therapy to access these vital services. You can check out her blog here [https://blog.expressable.io/]. Thanks for listening! Follow Dreamland Baby @dreamlandbabyco and check out our website here! Use code MOMMANUAL10 for 10% off your first Dreamland Baby purchase.

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What is the biggest misconception about Aphasia?

language speech misconceptions parkinson hoover clinical director clinical professor aphasia hearing sciences

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2022 23:59

What is aphasia? How can workplaces better accommodate aphasia patients? What is happening at the Boston University (BU) Aphasia Research Center? In this episode, we are delighted to welcome Clinical Professor in the Department of the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Dr. Elizabeth Hoover. She is also currently the Clinical Director of the BU Aphasia Research Center. Dr. Hoover's research focuses on adult neurogenic communication and swallowing disorders, with a special emphasis on stroke, traumatic brain injury, and Parkinson's disease. Tune into this episode to hear more about Dr. Hoover's work, common misconceptions about aphasia, and how long has Dr. Jacbos been working at Sargent College?

E85: What does it mean to be the dean of Sargent College?