Are you interested in working with swallowing patients? Theresa Richard joined us on the Speechie Show and explained how to brush up on the five things you need to know about treating swallowing disorders as a speech language pathologist.  #speechieshow

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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 everybody and welcome to the Speechie Show. I am your host Carrie Clark from Speech & Language kids.com. And we are here today with Teresa Richard from Mobile Dysphagia Diagnostics. How are you today Teresa?

Teresa:   Hi Carrie, good, how are you?

Carrie:   We’re good. We are excited to have Theresa on today. We are talking about dysphasia and what you need to brush up on if you want to start treating swallowing patients. So, a lot of time our school-based SLPs may be interested in picking up some extra hours. Maybe they’re looking at a change of venue and it’s been a long while since we were in grad school. So, we’re talking about what’s up to date on swallowing and swallow studies and kind of all the information you need to know about that. So, we are going to go ahead and get started with that. I have a couple of things I want to announce but I’m going to wait until a few more people hop on the call. So, Teresa why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you have going on right now.

Teresa:   Yeah, so I am Teresa Richard. I am board certified in swallowing. I own a mobile swallowing study company, Mobile Dysphagia Diagnostic. We do mobile fees, which is actually it’s a tiny endoscope that goes in the nose and then gives a view of the swallow. So that’s what we do. We contracted various skilled nursing facilities, hospitals when we take the equipment right to them. So, it can be just an alternative procedure to the modified barium swallow study that everybody knows about. But they are both comparable. They both have pros and cons of what they can assess but they are both very necessary and what we do. And then I also have a blog over on my website also with a lot of dysphasia resources and things that we need to know. And then I also have a podcast coming out this Friday called Swallow Your Pride. So just talking about all the latest and greatest research. So much. I mean I graduated from grad school over 10 years ago and I think everything we need to do now if so different from then. It’s a great evolving and emerging field with so much great new knowledge but unfortunately some of us haven’t been in grad school recently and may not know all of it.

Carrie:  And even when I was in grad school I don’t think we got a ton of swallowing. You know it was like one little half a credit course and that was it.

Teresa:   Yeah, that’s the problem. There are some great medical SLP programs out there but just the general curriculum, I would not want to be a decision professor because there is some cover. It’s hard.

Carrie:   Absolutely. We’re going to jump into that. We’re going to hear 5 tips that you need to know and brush up on if you are going to be looking into treating swallowing patients. But before we do that, I do want to mention that our hearts go out to everyone down in Texas and letting that is happening there. If you haven’t heard, the Speech & Language Kids, we are offering free light memberships to anyone who has been affected by the flood. So, if you have lost your speech therapy materials or you are afraid you might have lost them when you get back to your schools, we are setting you up with free light membership so that you have access to our worksheet library. And you can get that by emailing us at carrie@speechandlanguagekids.com and just let us know that you are in that situation. You can also find the information over on the Speech and Language Kids Facebook page. So, we do need your help if you know someone down there who could use this. Go over to the Facebook page and either tag them in the comments or share it with them in some way so that we can spread the word. I don’t actually know anybody down there in Texas but I know that there are a lot of people who are probably out of their homes and out of their schools and missing some materials. Hopefully that will help. But go ahead and share that around for everyone who needs that so they can get access to it. Okay so let’s jump back in here. We are talking about swallowing study. And treating swallowing patients. So, in the comments section below go ahead and type in would you feel comfortable walking into a room and doing a swallowing study right now.  Would you feel confident to do that?  My answer is no, I wouldn’t have a clue. Hahaha

Teresa:   I hope your answer is no if you’ve been out of the field for a while. hahaha

Carrie:   Yeah! So why don’t you start us off. We are going to talk about our first tip which is going back to the anatomy and physiology, which I knew really well when I passed my Praxis, but let’s talk about it now because I don’t. Hahaha

Teresa:   Yeah, it’s the basis of everything we do. You know we have to know the anatomy and physiology of the swallow. There are some great textbooks out there. I know pretty much everyone had the logemann textbook of 1998, which seems to be the swallowing Bible. But the treatment and that, we know so much more now. but luckily the anatomy and physiology doesn’t change.  If you still have that textbook, use that. But we have to know what muscles we are treating. There are so many different great evidence-based treatment strategies now. We have electro stimulation and things like that, but you have to know the muscles that you are treating. So, the whole point of speech therapy and dysphasia therapy is to improve the muscle and improve the swallow. So, we don’t just want to throw a crush on it. We have liquids which are great but they are essentially just a crutch.  So, they should just be…click here to read the full transcript.