Are you curious about the medical side of our field?  @Rinki.SLP  joined us live on July 24th to share 5 things you didn’t know about being a medical speech-language pathologist.  #speechieshiow

Below are the links to the products that were talked about in the Speechie show:

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Or if you prefer to read the transcript, see below:

Welcome to the Speechie Show! Being a speech-language pathologist often means having too much work and not enough planning time. To beat the overwhelm, we’re bringing you the tricks and tools that will make your job a little bit easier.

Carrie:  Hello everyone and welcome to the Speechie Show. I am here today with Rinki from the Dysphagia Grand Rounds website. And we are talking today about being a medical SLP, which is a topic that we really haven’t talked about so thank you for coming on to talk about this today.

Rinki:   Thank you for having me I’m so excited!

Carrie:   Good, I’m glad. Alright if you’re just joining us we are talking today about being a medical SLP things you didn’t know about that. And we’re going to approach this from the standpoint of that most of my audience is generally school-based or private practice. So maybe some people in the audience aren’t really familiar with what a medical SLP does. So Rinki is here to share that with us.  If you are new to the Speechie Show, we do this once a week every Monday afternoon. I hop on with a new speech language pathologist and we talk about a topic. We’re going to share five tips with you today and then we’re going to do a giveaway towards the end. A couple of giveaways. So, stay tuned for that. And we will also share some fun resources for you today. So, if you are joining us on Facebook Live today go ahead and type in which kind of setting you are working in. So are you a school-based SLP. Are you in the medical setting? If so, where are you. We just kind of want to get an idea of who is watching today and what kinds of settings you guys are in.  So, type this in the comments of Facebook Live right now and while they’re doing that, Rinki why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Rinki:   Again, thanks for having me I am really excited! I am Rinki Varindani Desai. So, as you mentioned I’m a medical speech language pathologist born and brought up in Mumbai India. That is where I completed my undergraduate in speech and language pathology. And then I came to the US in 2009. I completed my Master’s in speech pathology from the University of Texas at Dallas. And I have been here ever since. The rest is history. And I have enjoyed every moment of it.

Carrie:   Wonderful! Now did you find that there was a lot of difference between studying in India and studying here? Or is it pretty consistent across the world?

Rinki:   It’s really not. I don’t know about the other countries but like just comparing the East and Western end of the US, it’s very different because Speech Pathology is kind of new in my country and things are changing a lot. But there is a lot of awareness that needs to be done. And I don’t know if you are aware, but India is the second most populated country in the world. So, we have a population of like close to 1.2 billion people. But we only have a couple thousand SLPs in the whole country.

Carrie:  That’s Crazy!

Rinki:   So there were two schools in my whole state. We were 30 students graduating for the year. We were the only people providing these services. So, there is a lot of education that needs to be done. A lot of awareness. And I think even the way medical SLPs are looked at, I don’t think they are aware of our role like they are here in the US. I am hoping that things are changing soon.

Carrie:   Absolutely.   So, we are going to be talking specifically today about the medical side of that. Have you been doing that since you’ve graduated with your Masters or have you been back and forth?

Rinki:  Nope. I’ve never worked with kids. I think the last time I worked with kids was back in India in 2007 so I wouldn’t know what to do with a child and a school.

Carrie:   See and I wouldn’t have any clue what to do with a swallow patient.

Rinki:   It’s amazing to think about that now. I worked for two years in India before coming to the US.

Carrie:   Perfect, alright. So, we have one person chiming in that she is a school-based SLP. If you are joining us on Facebook Live go ahead and type in which setting you’re working in currently. We want to know where everybody is. We’re going to go ahead and get started though with our five tips. So, we are going to share today 5 things that you didn’t know about being a medical SLP. And the first thing we’re going to talk about are the types of disorders and patient population that you would work with as a medical SLP. So Rinki, go ahead and tell us what kinds of things we might be encountering in this niche.

Rinki:   So for those listening if you are a school based SLP or even the general public community, even though our title says speech language pathologist, Speech & Language are kind of the least of what you will be doing as a medical SLP. So, the two big areas are called mission was your thinking skills and swallowing. So swallowing disorders are called dysphagia. That’s kind of primarily what you will cover depending on what setting you are in. There are people who walk across the lifespan. So, we have medical SLPs working in …click here to read the full transcript.