liza bean

A different side to an SLP's world

I spent a good six hours at the actual hospital today, shadowing the speech language pathologist as she evaluated both acute and rehab patients. Needless to say, it was quite a different experience from working with children. The majority were individuals who needed a swallowing evaluation -the only life/death responsibility of an SLP. I don't know if I could ever handle that. If you put someone on a diet of solid food or liquids and his/her swallowing mechanism can't handle it, then that patient could end up choking or eventually come down with pnemonia (due to liquid or food penetrating the lungs). It was also interesting to be more exposed to the hospital atmosphere. In particular, after spending an hour in the ICU, I am ever so grateful that my biggest source of anxiety at the moment is whether or not I'll be able to handle the caseload next week, and NOT a sick child or husband recovering from a bad auto accident.