Labette Health's speech language pathology department assists individuals who have difficulty communicating, including speech, hearing, reading and writing and treats swallowing deficits. These difficulties result from stroke, traumatic brain injury, developmental delays, degenerative disease or many other related diagnoses.
Speech therapy works with individuals as an inpatient or outpatient, at home or in the skilled nursing facility, to achieve the optimum level of function and maximize independence.
Services
- Memory retention: thought process organization and judgment skills to improve memory.
- Teaching strategies to ensure a safe swallowing mechanism, as well as safe oral intake.
- Aid in speech production and production of expression of language.
- Facilitating comprehension of spoken and written information.
- Aural rehabilitation for the hearing-impaired.
- Providing education to family about communication problems and strategies to facilitate interaction.
- Providing in-service training to healthcare staff.
Areas of treatment
- Expressive and receptive language, including aphasia, dysarthria and apraxia treatment.
- Teaching strategies to ensure a safe swallowing mechanism and safe oral intake:
- Deep pharyngeal.
- Neuromuscular stimulation.
- Modified barium swallow studies.
- Strengthening.
- Aid for cognitive tasks through problem solving, writing, judgment, reading and thought-process organization.
- Reading and writing.
- Memory retention.
- Aural rehabilitation for hearing-impaired.
- Aid in voice rehabilitation.
- Child development program, including speech and language delay and/or deficits.
These are just some of the areas that speech therapy addresses. There may be other problems that are not mentioned that interfere with the ability to communicate wants, needs or ideas effectively or to swallow efficiently.