The Many Roles an SLP Plays in Older Adults Thriving

FOX Director of Speech-Language Pathology Services Jonross Neptune, MS, CCC-SLP, takes a broad look at how his field, though typically associated with pediatrics, can help older adults age optimally.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jonross Neptune, the Director of Speech-Language Pathology Clinical Services with FOX rehabilitation.

I’m here today to discuss the geriatric speech-language pathologist. When you think of an SLP, you think of someone that can work in a variety of different settings across the lifespan.

But today, I’m going to focus specifically on what a geriatric speech pathologist is and the setting in which they treat. A geriatric speech-language pathologist is someone that is well-versed in the management of chronic diseases that relates to communication, cognition, and swallowing.

One particular area that the geriatric speech-language pathologists will work with and is cognitive decline. And, they will assess an individual’s cognitive functioning through a variety of different tests and measures to get a baseline of where that individual is functioning and where they may need to go to perform certain everyday activities that will help that person ultimately age in place and improve their ability to function within their environment.

And you can do that through specific hands-on one-on-one interventions with the patient or you can do that through caregiver education and development of home exercise programs and compensatory strategies and queuing methods that the caregiver or loved ones may take over.

Another area that the geriatric speech-language pathologist will treat within is the treatment of language and speech. And this oftentimes accompanies an individual after they’ve had a stroke or a CVA and it can be detrimental to that person’s overall quality of life and ability to communicate their wants and needs.

The geriatric speech-language pathologist will perform an evaluation of that individual’s language and speech and come up with a treatment plan that targets those deficit areas to help that person either regain or compensate for the deficits that they present with.

And the same thing goes here: You will work with hands-on interventions within an individual to help make overall improve with that individual’s language and speech function, but also work with compensatory techniques and work with caregivers that may help elicit responses out of the individual through compensatory training or queuing methods that that may help that individual display their wants and needs and be able to get their point across and their thoughts displayed to their loved ones and friends and medical staff.

Another area that we would work with is voicing. And, you see this as individuals age from time to time that their voice quality is reduced. Their volume is reduced, especially in something like Parkinson’s disease, you will see a decline in that individual’s voice which makes it very difficult for that person to communicate their wants and needs: medical wants and needs, social wants — a lot of different areas like that.

And, the same thing goes there. You would evaluate that person’s voice and you would come up with a treatment plan that would address those areas so that the individual could then hopefully improve that voice so that they can make their wants and needs known.

The last area I’m going to focus on today is the treatment and management of swallowing disorders.

The geriatric speech-language pathologist is heavily involved within this area, due to the high prevalence of swallowing difficulties as one ages. And following a comprehensive swallowing evaluation where the people look at different food consistencies an individual’s ability to transfer and swallow, we will recommend to the physician any type of diet modifications that may need to happen to help keep that individual safe as well as implement any swallowing exercises that may help improve that individual’s ability to swallow stronger and safer with the goal of sustaining that nutrition and hydration in a safe way.

I guess the theme today was: We help those individuals age in place, and we want them to lead a quality-filled life and be able to stay in their environment that they wish to for longer periods of time.

And, it’s something that I love.

I know it’s something that many individuals love and, we’ve been seeing a lot more SLPs transition into the treatment of the geriatric patient. And, you know, it’s something that we really advocate for here at FOX. And if you want to learn more about the geriatric speech-language pathologist or the physical therapist or occupational therapist. please jump over to foxrehab.org for more. Thank you.