ERIN MOOREHLTH 4200

The Care Center

The Care Center

I interned with the speech department. Although Shannon Barnett was officially my supervisor, I learned from and spent time with all three of the speech therapists—Shannon, Emily, and Lauren.

The Care Center

Shannon in her office.

The Care Center

The Care Center is a pediatric therapy practice that offers aquatic therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy.

It employs three speech-language pathologists, one occupational therapist, two occupational therapist assistants, 2 physical therapists, and 1 physical therapist assistant.

The Care Center facilities include a large, open therapy gym, private treatment rooms, an indoor pool for aquatic therapy, and a sensory room.

The Care Center

The Care Center’s gym

The Care Center

The Care Center’s gym

The Care Center

The Care Center’s gym

The Care Center

The Care Center’s gym

The Care Center

Pool used for aquatic therapy sessions.

The Care Center’s Mission Statement

The Care Center will provide superior quality rehabilitative patient care and customer service in a productive and cost-effective manner within a work environment that rewards employees who can support these goals.

The Care Center’s Mission Statement

-To achieve this mission: Our customers (who include patients, family members, employers,

schools, vendors, and physicians) must be made to feel special and important.

Our patients must receive quality care from their first contact to the last that exceeds the level of service provided by other providers.

We strive to make every patient and family member believe that they were the most important person we saw that day, so much so, that they want to tell others in the community about our practice.

We strive to operate at a high level of productivity, making maximum use of our therapists and administrative employee’s time.

We strive to be convenient to the patient both in location and in ease of access.

We strive to foster strong relationships with referring physicians in the community by being responsive to their needs and courteous in our dealings with them.

We strive to attract imaginative, problem solving, self-starting, productive and caring people as employees.

Roles and Duties- Observation

I observed all patients who came on Mondays and Wednesdays and became very familiar with them. At the end of my internship, I was able to recognize certain areas that were being targeted during therapy sessions, and others that should be in the future.

Roles and Duties- Oral Communication

I found and prepared different worksheets, games, and activities to add to the speech department’s collection. I presented them to the SLPs and explained what goals they could target.

These will be ongoing resources that the speech department can use in future years.

Roles and Duties- Filing and Written Communication

I filed daily notes and progress reports for each of the different types of therapies.

For my written communication project, I completed a case study about one patient’s specific case and progress.

Each week during the patient’s session, I took detailed notes of each activity, and figured out which goal it was targeting.

I looked through the patient’s file and made note of how her progress had developed every three months since she started receiving therapy at The Care Center.

Different Work Settings of an SLP

The majority of speech-language pathologists work in educational settings, such as schools or colleges.

Educational setting pros: mostly work with children; get summers and holidays off; work with a team of teachers; workday from about 8am-3pm

Educational setting cons: high case load; often have to work in a group therapy session rather than one-on-one; therapy interruptions due to the school calendar; relationship with the child’s family is not as personalized; average salary is the lowest of the different work environments; lots of IEPs and paperwork

Different Work Settings of an SLP

Around 39% of SLPs work in health care related fields, such as hospitals and residential or nonresidential health care facilities.

Health care field pros: from 2005-2013, SLPs in nursing homes earned a higher median salary than SLPs in other environments (average of $85,610 in 2012); more fast paced in hospitals and not as repetitive as other environments

Health care field cons: could be disturbing at times (working in a hospital with patients who have had traumatic injuries, etc.); may not get to work with children (especially in nursing homes)

Different Work Settings of an SLP

About 19% of SLPs work for a private practice.Private practice pros: individualized one-on-one

sessions; immediate access to speech materials in personal office; may have a coordinated team of therapists (occupational, speech, physical therapists); limited distractions; less paperwork and more direct therapy; average salary is $70,000 for clinical service providers; easier to form personal relationships with the family

Private practice cons: can get repetitive; more variable income depending where you work; may have to purchase your own materials; Medicaid billing

Challenges of Being an SLP

Creating individualized plans for each patient.

Frustration when progress is minimal or slow.Knowing what to do as far as continuing or

stopping therapy can be difficult as well.Carry over to the home is also a challenge

and tends to be related to progress.

Rewards of Being an SLP

Being able to see children progress and finish therapy, or get to a level where they are their most functional self.

When it comes to feeding, it is rewarding to have children no longer require feeding tubes and just be able to eat by mouth.

With non-verbal children, it is extremely encouraging when the SLP is able to develop some kind of system, such as a communication device, where the child can express their wants and needs in a way that they weren’t able to before.

What I Have Learned

Many different diagnoses—what they are, how they’re diagnosed, what the prognosis generally looks like

It is a speech therapist’s job to find a way for a child to communicate to the best of their ability, even if that does not actually involve speaking

Nonverbal patients are helped to find ways to express themselves. Some methods I observed: Sign language A binder containing pictures that the child can point to if he/she

wants that item Devices with buttons that speak, saying: yes, no, more, all done,

I want, etc.

What I Have Learned

The majority of what being a speech therapist entails does not focus on pronunciation

It includes, but is not limited to: Diagnosing speech disorders Coming up with an individualized plan of care for each patient Feeding and swallowing Spatial concepts Prepositions Parts of speech Following multi-step directions Recognizing images, numbers, and letters Reading comprehension Answering hypothetical questions

What I Have Learned

SLPs conduct an initial speech evaluation to see if potential patients qualify for and would benefit from therapy. The language test described below is a common one.

Given at initial and yearly assessments to kids aged birth to 7 years 11 months, it tests if certain developmental skills are present based on the child’s age.

The are two sections to the test—auditory comprehension and expressive communication. The SLP begins the test based on the child’s chronological age. The receptive language section is done until the child gets 6 questions wrong in a row, and then the expressive communication section is started.

For a baby, the test measures things such as if the baby glances momentarily at the person talking to them, if they react to sounds other than people’s voices, etc. Usually a caregiver or parent will answer these questions based on experiences at home, because the baby is in a new place and their reactions may not be accurate.

The test manual gives a standardized score for the child, which compares them to other children their age and how they performed.

The child’s speech therapy goals are made based off the test results.

What I Have Learned

Many of the patients I eventually see will most likely receive other types of therapy. Of those that come to The Care Center, the majority receive more than one type of therapy. Most get all three (speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy) or are on the waiting list to get everything.

Although the therapists are the professionals, carryover at home is extremely important for obtaining better and quicker results and progressing through therapy.

What I Have Learned

If there is any chance at all that a child’s communication abilities could improve, even if it takes years, then it is worth treating them.