Classmates! I hope you are enjoying the beginning of your offsite experience! I can honestly say that this experience (thus far) has not been like I expected it to be ever since I sat in a seat at the ASHA convention and listened to many from Harding University share about the HIZ-PATH Zambia experience. I only say that because it has been SO MUCH MORE. We've heard previous students talk about how quickly they fall in love with the children at The Haven, and I can now say (firsthand) that it is true.
I thought that answering Lindsay's and Samar's questions and comments would be a good place to start off today's blog. I'm going to repost the questions/comments thus far and answer them below.
Were you all surprised with how well the children are developing (both in terms of language and feeding/swallowing) despite the lack of one-on-one instruction time?
I can honestly say that all of us are surprised of how well the children are developing (both in terms of language and feeding/swallowing) despite the lack of one-on-one instruction time. It goes to show how much of an impact Meagan has made at The Haven since returning and the lasting impression that previous HIZ-Path teams had made. With that said, there are still needs to that to be met and we are beginning to target objectives for the children in the feeding/language groups.
For assessment of the children, as described above by Brittany, we used the milestone chart given to us by Caroline Martin during the pediatric dysphagia seminar. This served as our foundation during assessment of the children at The Haven. Although, this may not be considered "standardized" as assessments would be in the states, this milestone chart provides the next steps needed for the children assessed at The Haven and gives insight on what developmental milestones the child is currently at or emerging in and what milestones should be targeted for therapy.
Shout out to Dr. Tullos. I wish you were here! Sometimes I get lonely and there is no other male here to tuck me in, tell me bedtime stories, and sing me to sleep. You are missed! Just a side note, we are recording "HIZ-PATH TV" in our free time in which I interview a member of our team each day. Please continue to pray that God uses us to the best of our abilities and that HIS will is done! Please post on how your offsites have been so we can read all about it!
Jake
Glad to hear that you are all doing well and enjoying your time with all the babies at the Havens. My off-site experience has gotten off to a wonderful start. Upon meeting my supervisor for the first time Monday morning, we realized that we were suite mates at ASU waaaayyyy back in the day. God does work in mysterious ways!
ReplyDeleteIt is fantastic that the impact of others there before you is being seen in the development and language skills of the children you are all seeing now. I am curious about Megan. Is she in Zambia year round? What does she do in Zambia at the Havens?
It's great to hear from you, Jake. The fact that you are alive and able to write this post informs me that you have yet to approach a den of lions. Good for you! :) I'm a little envious that you're all getting to love on little ones and participate in pediatric swallowing evaluation/therapy. That has to be a great experience... especially since you're getting such great instruction and on the job training! I'm getting a lot of experience with adult swallowing evaluation/therapy and have been able get my feet wet with comprehensive evaluations that assess cognition, language, and motor speech all at the same time. Great to hear from y'all!
ReplyDeleteWell, you wished to know all about my offsite...It is nearly two days old. (Maybe you will think the parallel passage funny.) I have to get up around five, so everything is funny. I have been doing a lot of the therapy partly unsupervised already. I go and get patients from their room and take them places, so wheelchair 101 is over. Everything we learned in Lowry's class applies. All the chart words are abbriviated, and every line of data that I collect gets a FIM score. So far it, is mostly cognitive therapy as well, so there you go--summary of inpatient rehab. I enjoy the leisurly pace; you don't really have to chase your clients around and make them sit still. You may be working on attention at the Haven. I have to do a lot of that at the hospital too since it has to be redevelped in the patient after an accident or stroke, etc. We use a lot of cuing to focus the patient to complete the task.
ReplyDeleteI am so happy to hear that you all are already falling in love with those sweet babies! That is wonderful! Like Shelbey said, what great on-the-job training you all are getting. In other news... I LOVE my off-site placement. My supervisor is wonderful, we work at our own pace, the paperwork is so much less time-consuming, and everyday is a new day- we never know how many or what types of patients we are going to get. We do mainly bedside swallow evals and MBS's (modified barium swallow studies). I feel like I've learned SO much just in the past three days! It sounds like we will all be pretty prepared for dysphagia in the fall. Praying for you all!
ReplyDeleteHey all. I am at White County Rehab South Campus with Anthony, who is a great supervisor (very personable, kind, and explanatory). We see mainly post CVA patients. Therapy consists of cognitive/lang tasks, oral motor exercises, and some feeding/swallowing therapy. Today we did screenings on new patients to determine whether they need further speech evaluation. I'm doing pretty much most of the therapy and Anthony is my safety net if I need anything. It's been a good experience so far.
ReplyDeleteHello!! So glad to hear that you all are enjoying your time in Zambia and that you are bonding so well with the babies. I am so happy to learn that they are developing so well! As I stated in my previous post, my offsite is St. Vincent's North Rehab and I love it!! The other therapists that I work with are absolutely wonderful and extremely knowledgeable. We primarily work with individuals who have had a stroke or TBI. Very interesting! Our therapy sessions target areas, such as word naming, sentence completion, attention, memory, orientation, organization, functional math, and medication management. Today I was independently doing most therapy session and I absolutely adore my supervisor Ashley! Today we began working with a patient that just had a complete laryngectomy, and tomorrow we will begin oral motor exercises with our patient. I can't wait! Hope everything continues to go smoothly for you all and I will continue to keep you all in my prayers. Love you all!
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm the oddball working at Time for Speech Pediatric Clinic in Anchorage, AK :-) Literally 99% of the kids I see have a diagnosis of autism, so THAT'S been new, however my supervisor tells me she would never guess that these kids were my first experiences with autism, so I guess I'm doing something right! I'm really looking forward to when I can observe Sarah, another SLP at our clinic when she does her home-visits for feeding therapy! I guess I'll be relying on all of y'alls' experiences during Dysphagia this fall! (BTW my supervisor pronounces it: /dIs'fadʒǝ/ Don't worry, I say nothing :-P
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