This text-based course is a transcript of the live event, “Serving the Needs of Individuals with Moderate-Severe”, presented by Nancy Alarcon, M.S., CCC-SLP, BC-ANCDS.
Click here for supplemental handouts.
>> Nancy Alarcon: I appreciate the opportunity talk about a subject that is very near and dear to me. When we think about determining the course of our services for this segment of our clinical population, the individuals who are living with moderate to severe aphasia, they are typically markedly compromised in their communication skills, and it challenges our clinical skills as well. Additionally, given the limited coverage for outpatient services that you experience in your working environment, the individuals we will talk about today may return home with minimal access to the communication skills as they knew them before they entered the medical environment.
I would like to pause just for a moment and extend a special appreciation to my colleagues, who really led the way in encouraging me to participate in clinical research and this particular area of clinical work, especially Dr. Margaret Rogers, who now serves as Chief Staff Officer for Science and Research at ASHA. Margaret and I worked together in many of the content areas that we will discuss. I would also like to recognize our graduate clinicians in our department, who as you can imagine, teach me and challenge me every day to think about why we do what we do. First and foremost are the patients and their communication partners. We learn so much from them and they are really a guiding part of our conversation today. We are honored and privileged to be able to share their lives with them in so many ways.
It goes without saying that the power of communication is so profound, and in our practice, we recognize that. But I want to encourage us to continually revisit the impact of the change in communication that these individuals experience. It will really come to light as we talk about a framework that can be a guiding philosophy for our practice. We will also talk about trying to identify relative strengths as we look across multiple modalities of communication, looking at how we truly strive to unmask the real competency of the individual who now presents with moderate to severe aphasia. I will pause for a second and say many of the aspects that we are going to discuss are going to apply to those of you who might be working with other clinical populations, from those who work in the public schools and may have individuals with Down syndrome as an example, those with traumatic brain injury in a medical setting, those with progressive degenerative diseases. Today the population and the examples I will tap into are individuals with aphasia, but I do want you to think about some of these principles and how they will apply across settings.
