Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Stroke Unit Reflections

I'm leaving the stroke unit for a community job in another trust. Here are some of my final reflections on different aspects of working on a stroke unit. I definately enjoy the MDT atmosphere and mixture of acute and rehab patients, i'll be back....


Caseload
Patient
SLT
Team
Diagnosis/ relevant/ discharge information
Current swallowing goals treatment plans and progress
Current communication goals/ treatment plans and progress
How frequently should they be seen and by SLT or TA?

-        Form updated by SLT’s on an open drive, so that for MDT meetings/ when people were away it was clear where the patient were in terms of rehab.
-        Weekly timetabling meeting – tick off who is seeing which patient + can see if any patients were missed.
-        Daily patient timetabling – flexible – can see new patients/ + often patients go for investigations. Joint sessions, goal planning, groups TOMS and MDM’s pre planned.
-        Try to record as much of what you do as possible

Care packages
-        Consider what service patients are given across all of the SLT’s e.g. informal screen – recommendations – further assessment – therapy. This would allow us to explain to commissioners what package of care we offer.
-        Write care plans with Long term, short term and session goals on them.

Goal Setting
-        Involving patients and their families early on in finding functional meaningful goals lead to positive outcomes.
-        Introducing goals and having an informal discussion with patients about goals was useful before then making MDT goals.
-        Accessing therapy was a good goal – i.e. ability to follow instructions/ order food/ communicate basic needs/ communicate what activities done in hospital to family/ friends/ communicate with peers.
-        Frequently reviewing SMART or short term goals was important in order to focus goals on achieving long term aims.
-        Impairment based goals needed more explanation to clients.
Family meetings
-        Prepare information beforehand and note down specific examples of behaviours e.g. patient not initiating communication.
-        Explain the SLT role and the type of interactions the patient is receiving and why.
-        Briefly explain what you may expect to find with the neurology.

AAC
-        AAC often did not work on the stroke unit due to: 1) patients continually changing/ priorities changing 2) many patients had cognitive impairment and were unable to access AAC 3) High variety of staff – difficult to get everyone to use the AAC
-        Topic cards with a main topic + picture on them and a list of mini topics on the back (attatched together by a pin) worked well with aphasic patients to support people to understand what they were trying to communicate and were easy to model.
-        Picture charts worked well to enable patient to communicate basic needs/ make orders of food.

Oesophageal/ voice patients
-        Refer to ENT/ gastro for more information before recommending oral intake/ giving voice exercises.

Low arousal patients/ Global aphasia patients
-        Monitor with the Wessex Head Injury Matrix – looking for: eye contact/ opening/ vocalisation etc.
-        Regular mouthcare, sometimes moving on to flavoured mouthcare.
-        Look for spontaneous swallows.
-        Assess Yes/No response e.g. Putney Yes/no assessment with objects
-        Joint sessions with PT/OT since these patients were most responsive when getting moved etc.
-        Communication history – find out interests etc – play music/ ask about family etc.
-        Object to object matching? Gesturing object function, picture to object matching – assess ability to use AAC – see what supports comprehension e.g. objects of reference or clear choices by holding up objects.

Locked in patients/ significant expressive aphasia/ dysarthria
-        Using a diary to record daily activities enabled me to communicate with the clients family and gave me information to use in supported conversations/ yes/no questions/ gesture therapy etc.
-        AEIOU – alphabet board with an ‘end of word’ facilitated patients to communicate complicated information.
-        Buzzer with a recorded message = simple functional way of communicating basic needs when paired with a list of yes/ no questions e.g. Toilet, back to bed, re-positioning, drink/food.
-        Yes?no – look for a consistent response and handover to the team.

Dementia patients
-        Find out baseline – may be able to make some recovery from the stroke damage if cognitively able to engage in activities.
-        History – preferred foods/ activities.
-        Assess swallowing .
-        Often finger foods / sweet flavourful foods are best e.g. jam sandwich/ yogurt.
-        Feeding guidelines – set up meal
-        Breakfast/ lunch groups often good feeding environment.
-        Do not recommend tube feeding e.g. PEG unless you think they may recover from stroke damage.
-        Communication guidelines for the ward
-        Refer to the dieticians since often variable intake

Aphasia
-        Initial communication screen – naming bedside objects, following 2-3 stage instructions, yes/no questions, automatic speech
-        The cognitive screen on the CAT was a good indicator of whether a patient would be able to access any impairment based therapy e.g. if 3minute recognition memory was impaired – unlikely.
-        The stroke handbook – patients wanted to know what had happened to them – can use pictures in the handbook + information form the doctors to explain why they had a stroke and how it might have affected them.
-        First topics – family, = good topic, work/ home = good topics.
-        Communication history from family
-        SMART session goals – record quantitative/ qualitative information during sessions.

Severe Expressive
-        Automatic speech – try to elicit any speech
-        Reading/ writing assessment
-        Activities – personalised cuing therapy, semantic associations….
Severe Receptive
-        Joint work with family/ in functional situations

Group work
Communication group
-        Varied between total communication e.g. with pictures chosen that were relevant to the patients e.g. Bob Marley, having blood taken…. And supported conversation work.
- Real life resources/ props were engaging for the patients e.g. map/tube map/ menu....
-        Topics for supported conversation: Food (menus, photo's, recipe's) , work, leisure (cinema, reading, shopping, where to go with friends), holidays (map), Geography (where from, where live, where the hospital is..), Hobbies, music (with CD's e.g. discuss/ put hand up if you like the song), Sport (pictures/ news articles).
Newspaper group
-        Newspapers used as prompts – have pictures, headings, summaries and whole articles as a hierarchy.
-        Each patient had their own goal for the group – the SLT facilitated discussions etc.
Dysarthria
-        Functional - communication – guidelines for staff – pad and paper to write keywords/sentences, ask yes/no questions, encourage them to give keywords/ single word answers, deep breath go slowly over articulate. – trial using a communication chart to communicate basic needs on the ward. Considered use of AAC e.g. lightwriter/ i-pad
-        Impairment based – work upwards with dysarthria (bottom down) therefore if someone has breathing/ respiratory difficulties you would start on these before any work on articulation/ intelligibility.  Minimal pairs work, telephone work, barrier activities, use the frenchay intelligibility section for a baseline.
-        Use a hierarchy e.g. strategies in one to one – in small group….

Apraxia of speech
-         
Cognitive Communication Disorders
                  Group work – to increase initiation, get feedback on communication, practice turn taking etc.
                  Create a communication passport – information about the client and their preferences and interests (used for a patient with severe cognitive impairments unable to initiate communication).
                  Functional tasks – e.g. sequencing/ planning when making recipes in breakfast group.
                  FAVORS – assessment for higher level functional assessment of executive skills, memory etc.
                  LA – Trobe assessment – looks at communication behaviours and how they have changed, has a section for the client + a family member – you can combine these and discuss possible goals.
                  Access to therapy – are the cognitive communication defits affecting therapy participation.

Communication screen
1.     Object picture matching
2.     Spoken word – object matching
3.     Written word – picture matcing
4.     Naming
5.     Repeating
6.     Informal conversation
7.     Attention/cognition
8.     Gesturing object use

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