Holiday or seasonal craft activities can target many cognitive and language skills, while giving both the SLP and the residents a break from workbook activities, paper and pencil tasks, and lists of questions and directions. I have a favorite coloring activity that I have used for several years that targets receptive language, memory, sequencing, ...

I know what I want my patients to achieve. I want one to be able to resume PO intake after a PEG placement. I want another to communicate wants and needs with family and staff. I want a new patient with memory loss to adapt to the living environment and daily routine at the SNF and take part in social activities. I use several objective measures ...

Both short- and long-term goals may be scrutinized in order to determine whether skilled speech therapy services are medically necessary in the SNF setting, as well as in other settings involving adult and geriatric patients, such as Home Health Care (HHC) and Assistive Living Facilities (ALF). It is the responsibility of the SLP to clearly define ...

Short-term goals are our steps toward long-term goals and should be seen as milestones that we can use to help the patient to reach along the way to attaining a functional outcome. Therapists identify skills to target as short-term goals that can be learned in a specific time frame of three weeks or so, and these  should be updated as ...

Last week I posted the first half of my interview with a trained speech language pathologist who is now using her speech and language skills in a new role, as an Assistive Technology Consultant/ Professional Development Specialist. Today I would like to share the second half of my interview where my guest provides instructive and helpful ...

Recently, I have been thinking of goals and how we write them. Many of us use a ''goal bank'' at our jobs, which is helpful because we don't have to type the same wording over and over; however, we have to be very careful not to fall into the pitfall of ''cookie-cutter'' goals. We all learned to write clear, measurable goals in graduate school, ...

Recently, I posted an interview with Christine Costello, a CFY-SLP who shared some of her experiences and thoughts about working in long-term care. As spring approaches, I know that many graduate students are anticipating graduation and beginning a search for employment. While graduate programs offer a variety of clinical experiences, they do not ...

This week's post is an interview with Christine Costello about her Clinical Fellowship Year (CFY) experiences. Last year I had the privilege of supervising Christine for a few months in the skilled nursing facility (SNF) setting. Although Christine decided to explore an opportunity in the public education system while still in her CFY, I know ...

Last week, Sam asked a great question: if I could give one single word that best describes what autism is or how it feels to have autism, what would it be? That single word is anxiety. This week, I want to give you some techniques to use with people with autism to ease that high anxiety level they suffer. And I do mean suffer. Anxiety ...

Are you aware you can adjust the general settings on your iPad? By controlling the specific settings, you can increase students' attention, decrease frustration and behaviors, and most importantly, make the most use out of your therapy time. Settings allows you to restrict access to certain areas on your iPad and provide SLPs  with ...