Evaluation and Treatment of Post-Extubation Dysphagia: The Importance of the Speech Pathologist in the Intensive Care Unit

Purpose: Post-extubation dysphagia is associated with negative health outcomes including pneumonia, prolonged hospital stay, in-hospital mortality, and inability to discharge home. The purpose of this review article is to summarize published research on screening, evaluating, and treating post-extubation dysphagia. Method: Review of published literature on post-extubation dysphagia to shape best practice guidelines for speech pathologists. Results: Current research on post-extubation dysphagia focuses heavily on screening and evaluation. There are limited data on targeted treatment methods for post-extubation dysphagia. Conclusions: Speech pathologists play a critical role in helping patients safely return to oral alimentation following prolonged endotracheal intubation. Speech pathologists should use the available research to shape best practice guidelines within their facility for who, when, and how to evaluate for dysphagia following extubation.

Mental Health Practitioners’ Understanding of Speech Pathology in a Regional Australian Community

(1) Background: This study aimed to determine the level of knowledge and the perceptions of speech pathology held by a sample of regional mental health practitioners and to explore factors that facilitate understanding of the roles of speech pathologists in mental health. While mental health is recognised as an area of practice by Speech Pathology Australia, the inclusion of speech pathologists in mental health teams is limited. (2) Methods: An anonymous online survey was created using previously validated surveys and author generated questions and distributed to mental health practitioners in Central Queensland, Australia. (3) Results: Mental health practitioners had difficulty identifying speech pathology involvement when presented with case scenarios. Accuracy was poor for language-based cases, ranging from 28.81% to 37.29%. Participants who reported having worked with a speech pathologist were more likely to demonstrate higher scores on the areas of practice questions, [r(53) = 0.301, p = 0.028], and the language scenarios [r(58) = 0.506, p < 0.001]. They were also more likely to agree to statements regarding the connection between speech pathology and mental health, r(59) = 0.527, p < 0.001. (4) Conclusions: As found in this study, contact with speech pathologists is a strong predictor of mental health providers’ knowledge of the speech pathology profession. Thus, the challenge may be to increase this contact with mental health providers to promote inclusion of speech pathologists in the mental health domain.

Ways to develop the language competence of future speech pathologists in the context of bilingualism

This article discusses the ways of teaching students in the chosen specialty in two languages. It is a natural phenomenon to demand from the branches of science research that meets the socio-social demand of its time. This also applies to the problem of developing the language competence of future speech pathologists in the context of bilingualism, which is the core of research work. The rapid development of the country's economy and the international cultural sphere also places a lot of demands on future specialists preparing for the labor market. For the education of a versatile personality of teenagers with deep knowledge, the future specialist must also be a professionally competent specialist himself. It is noted that one of the indicators is a specialist who speaks several languages. The article analyzes the concepts of «teaching method», «active teaching methods» and «methods of active socio-psychological training». The paper notes the importance of studying the teachings on the bilingual competence of students in the context of globalization. This article it is noted that the goal is to develop the language competence of future specialists, achieved by using knowledge about the system of language and speech, the development of communicative and cognitive skills and speech-language skills to solve problems in professional activities. The approach to the study of the Kazakh and Russian languages on a professional-oriented basis is considered as a means of mastering the chosen specialty.

Speech Pathologist’s Positive Motivation is a Guaranty of Child’s Psychological Safety

The article examines the concept of speech pathologists’ positive motivation for their future professional work and the concept of psychological safety of the children with speech disorders, according to the analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature, and clarifies the relationship of these components. It also describes the essential educational conditions contributing to the formation of positive motivation of the future speech pathologists during educational process at their university, substantiates the urgency of the problem of developing this type of motivation in the students.

THE PECULIARITIES AND THE WAYS OF FORMING OF PROFESSIONAL MOTIVATION OF FUTURE DEFECTOLOGISTS IN EDUCATIONAL AREA

The article considers the formation of professional motivation in future speech pathologists. The importance of solving this issue is emphasized, because the work of a defectologist requires the presence of special characteristics in his personality, the formation of which is carried out during their training. Issues of personal development of the student and the formation of his readiness for future professional activity become the main in the outlined situation. The psychological and personal readiness of the specialist for professional self-realization in modern conditions is important. It is emphasized that the transformation of the requirements for professionals of different natural influences the solution of the question of the complex relationship of personal and professional development of the subject. The question of quality criteria for the training of future speech pathologists can not be considered separately from the requirements of a particular environment in which the specialist works. It is at the stage of professional training in the university begin to develop in a specialist-defectologist those values and motives that determine the success of his work in the profession, and for this it is necessary to study the formation of professional values and motives in the formation of future defectologists.

Interpreter-mediated aphasia assessments

A setting which presents special challenges for interpreter-mediated communication is the speech pathology clinic, particularly when the encounter involves the assessment of aphasia. Drawing on a corpus of five interpreter-mediated assessments of aphasia in speakers of a range of languages (Cantonese, Greek, Tagalog and Vietnamese), this paper presents the findings of an interactive framing analysis of the corpus, focusing on illustrative extracts from two of the encounters. Analysis reveals that while the interpreters are frequently oriented towards issues of ‘meaning’ or ‘content’, the speech pathologists are generally oriented to issues of ‘form’. This is evident from the fact that the speech pathologists frequently question the interpreters about the ways in which the speaker’s language is abnormal. The interpreters, however, tend to respond to such questions with reference to their impressions of the person’s intended meaning. It is argued that these differences in orientation can be explained by the different professional knowledge schemata of speech pathologists and interpreters and the fundamentally ‘uninterpretable’ nature of many of the speakers’ utterances. This lack of shared understanding makes the interaction inefficient, and frequently results in a situation where the person with aphasia is put ‘on hold’. The paper concludes with a discussion of some practical implications for the conduct of interpretermediated aphasia assessments.