A Day in the Life of an Acute Care SLP

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from a guest blog post that originally appeared on Tactus Therapy. In the post, speech-language pathologist Brenda Arend shares highlights of a typical day working in acute care at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, Washington. 8:30 a.m.: Assigning patients The first part of my day is spent opening up patient charts in our EPIC electronic medical record and assigning three SLPs to see patients in our 380-bed hospital. Two or three SLPs cover a caseload that ranges from 15 to 30 patients, although recently we see as many as 42. In addition, we also provide outpatient video fluoroscopic swallow studies (VFSS) three days a week. Today, I am assigned to see seven patients and complete the outpatient VFSS. 9:00 a.m.: Re-evaluation in ICU My first stop is the intensive care unit (ICU) to see a man who had a heart attack. He aspirated secretions during the cardiac arrest and had to be intubated for 10 days. Another SLP assessed him yesterday and determined he wasn’t ready to starting eating orally, so I’m there to re-assess. The patient pulled out his feeding tube yesterday, so the care team is eager to hear the results of my assessment. 10:00 a.m.: Swallowing assessment My next patient is a lady who had burr holes placed in her skull to remove a blood clot on her brain (a hematoma). She is awake, alert, has excellent oral control, and shows no signs of swallowing difficulty on my bedside evaluation. She looks great! I order a r...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology acute care Aphasia Cognitive Rehabilitation Dysphagia Health Care Swallowing Disorders Source Type: blogs