3- FOXcast SLP: Maureen Colket On Demonstrating Value

Maureen: Keep in touch with your colleagues your physical and occupational therapy

Jimmy: Cousins.

Maureen: Cousins, yes. Just keep educating yourself. Don’t rule anything out in your career.

Jimmy: Welcome to FOXcast SLP, a podcast for clinicians made by clinicians. It’s brought to you by FOX Rehabilitation. Find out more at foxrehab.org.

Welcome to FOX cast SLP I’m your host Jimmy McKay, and I’m joined this afternoon with my colleague here FOX Rehabilitation Maureen Colket. Maureen, welcome to the program.

Maureen: Thank you.

Jimmy: What’s your background? How long have you been with FOX? What’d you do before you wound up here with us?

Maureen: I’ve been with FOX a little over a year now and I’ve been a speech therapist about 11 years.

Jimmy: A lot of the people we have across all three of our podcasts are clinicians with FOX and some have that background of: “I studied here as a student.” And then, some like yourself were somewhere else and came here.

What setting were you in before you on your way to FOX?

Maureen: I was in skilled nursing for a while it was working for a company and it was good I think I learned a lot there. Certainly helped me in my career. But things have changed a little bit for the better.

Jimmy: Yeah. That’s good. What was that touchpoint? What was that thing that made you say hey maybe I’ll go over here?

Maureen: I was looking for something different but honestly I had a daughter and that was really what changed my career path initially. But I was really happy to find FOX because it just gave more opportunities. Scheduling improving yourself as a clinician because of the people that I found myself working with here.

Jimmy: Well we’re glad you’re here. We wanted to talk about a few things. Number one, you think SLP’s need to be better. And that we’re going to say OK well we all need to be better. How? And the almighty why?

Maureen: Well when I introduced myself I even said speech therapist, but I recently read. Don’t call yourself a speech therapist. Call yourself a speech language pathologist and so I thought does it matter? The answer is YES. Because speech language pathologist it’s not just to sound better it’s to cover more of what you actually do as a therapist. You walk into a room and you say, “Hi I’m the speech therapist” and the patient looks at you and they say, “What’s wrong with my speech?” And then you have to explain. And I think we just need to set ourselves up a little bit better from the get go.

Jimmy: I like how you’re using that word “we” and taking ownership of it in terms of as a profession that’s where you get ideas or beliefs changed is if we do it at the same time you’re singing a common tune you’re saying a common phrase that’s the way it’ll get adopted.

Maureen: Right. I think there’s a lot of a feeling of where this speech language pathologists and then there are the Ph.D. and the researchers and we’re all very separated but it’s starting to feel the way that we can have more connections between those two groups. You know we go to school we learn from the Ph.D. and then we go out into the clinic and there’s always that common misconception that well they’re not connected to the clinic. They don’t know what it’s like and then they don’t follow the evidence. But we’re all in the same line of work really. We all want the same things.

Jimmy: There’s a very common thread there in that it’s them it’s them. But no no I think that the smartest people that people that I respect the most are able to either be one or the other but see the other side’s point of view and say it’s us. We’re all in this profession together and we should act as such. What are the ways that you explain what an SLP does to someone who doesn’t know because I think this is an important message to practice and then to put into practice.

Maureen: Yes definitely it does depend on your audience. So if you’re explaining to the patient you don’t want to overwhelm someone with too much information to say you know I’m here to check out your swallowing see how things are working and see what I can do to help it become easier and make it better. Or maybe say you know I do a lot of training with memory and safety. Your doctor wanted me to check things out with use I’m going to ask you some questions. You go from there. You’re talking with the patient. It’s one thing if you’re chatting with friends and they say what do you do and you say Well here there’s a whole list that I can cover voice therapy swallowing therapy language articulation. It’s a lot. So it depends on who your audiences to a point.

Jimmy: All therapists especially in OT PT and SLP, and I refer to them as the cousins, not quite brother and sister but cousins. There is a common misconception about what each of the therapies bring to a client and it often gets overlooked and I think that’s because we don’t practice what our message is enough. And you were at the top of the show we already discussed deciding what to call yourself, or yourselves or we or us. That’s a great first step and an important one. And then the step after that is how do you explain what you bring is value right? In business you always hear value proposition. I give you money you’re going to give me a good or a service. Do I think the good or the service is worth that money? If I do then we have a great exchange. So I think that value proposition is here are the things I provide. And if you think those are valuable if I can get you to do the things that you want yes I will give you my time my attention. The first part of that is when we offer.

Maureen: I think there might be an assumption especially for a newer graduate or even someone in my position where you assume that the physical or the occupational therapist they know everything that the speech therapist could provide. So of course they’re looking out for who needs to be referred. But there might be an opportunity there where you say well you know what about doing some breathing exercises and voice exercises for this patient with Parkinson’s disease. Had you thought about that and let me join the party.

Jimmy: It’s that assumption where that person knows everything I’m able to do. They didn’t ask which means they don’t think that they need it or they don’t respect what I do. And I think that assumption gets myself and a lot of people get into trouble. I like to try to own that and avoid that as much as possible just for just for situations like you just mentioned you know the phrase lifelong learner is not there for you just for the heck of it. Make sure you know you’re going to learn a lot from that maybe even more than than from your professors from the people you’re working with and around you can also teach a lot of those things. Right. What are some things that you try to impart on maybe some of the newer graduates that you get to talk to here at FOX.

Maureen: It’s important to know that if you don’t know something there’s a way to find out. Don’t shy away from a new case and I think one of the things that helped me other than having a great support system along my career encouraging me was look up the new diagnosis if you don’t know what it is. Call another speech language pathologist we go if you need to know OK what would be a good goal for this person. You know you don’t have to know everything. Right out of graduate school you get this feeling like OK I have my degree I can do it. I shouldn’t have to ask any questions but I’m asking questions all the time and that’s ok.

Jimmy: I heard a great way to frame things and look things as a commencement means a beginning not an end. So we do that commencement thing at the end of school no matter what it is. And if you were supposed to know everything on graduation day I was in trouble because the more I learn something the more I realize what I didn’t know. We have a tradition on the show the FOXtale. Are you aware of this?

Maureen: I am. OK.

Jimmy: So you’ve listened to some episodes you already know this is coming. So so why did you decide to work with older adults?

Maureen: Well I can’t say that I chose it initially. I was one of the speech language pathologists who said oh I’ll work with children and briefly started doing with children and then kept pediatrics in the mix but found myself gravitating more and more after I had a little bit of experience with an older client population. And it’s sometimes the most relaxing thing to sit with someone who is 80 90 years old and maybe they’ll tell you a story now and again and I think there’s a draw there in addition to enjoying the clinical work itself.

Jimmy: Yeah it’s about people who are you comfortable with and I can’t tell you how many times I knew in grad school someone who said I’m definitely going to practice in this setting. And how many times they definitely did not. And sometimes it’s after you know that experience in school and sometimes those after graduating and starting a job with and realizing oh this is not the direction I want to go in any parting thoughts or are wisdom you’d want to leave with the audience about how to maybe frame what you actually bring and how we as a profession can do it better?

Maureen: It’s important to keep in touch with your colleagues your physical and occupational therapy cousins cousins Yes and just keep educating yourself read articles. Maybe you’ll publish one one day. I don’t know. Don’t rule anything out in your career.

Jimmy: Like that don’t rule anything out either that specifically about foxes. We have PT’s OT’s and SLP’s all in the same practice. So there is that ability to comfortably communicate. Sometimes that’s the barrier, am I comfortable enough to be vulnerable to ask this person a question essentially asking the question says I don’t know this. Can you tell me can you help me? God I love that about FOX because the goal really is the client and if you can learn something here with this client well great you can apply it to everybody else that might be applicable to so. Maureen appreciate you taking some time out and talking with us.

Maureen: Sure. Thank you it’s been fun.

Jimmy: Thanks for listening to FOXcast SLP, a podcast for clinician’s made by clinician’s. It’s brought to you by FOX Rehabilitation. Find out more at foxrehab.org.