First Week

I've just finished my first week as a fully qualified SLT!!! After a few days of induction i was onto the stroke unit to see my first patient and get familiar with the way the unit is run. The main difference from my student placements is that you need to think much quicker. I've needed to really organise my thoughts, e.g. what i'm looking for in a patient and why. 

Here are my personal recommendations after reflecting on my performance feeding back to the team about an initial communication assessment:

1. I need to give concrete examples of the language/communication used by the client and examples of what context they were used in e.g. when asked to describe a picture ...... was unable to ..... and was able to convey some meaning through gesture.

2. I need to become fluent at giving jargon free descriptions of my medical diagnoses e.g. Expressive and receptive aphasia.

3. I need to support the patient during the family meeting to a) Understand what we are talking about and b) Contribute to decisions about their care.