Student? New to aphasia?

As you may have noticed, I am quite passionate about speech therapy with adults. To be honest, every now and then people around me actually ask me to stop and talk about something else. Some of them seem to think it would  be a good idea not to look at the world through "How I Can Use This in Therapy?" glasses all the time. Weird, huh?

Anyways, our love for sharing ideas seems to be quite popular with students and SLP:s who are new to aphasia. And we love it! We have students visit our clinic for demos, we supervise students and of course, we love to talk about things they observe in patients. This has led to quite a few people contacting us with questions when they get to the Hands on- phase of therapy with patients of their own.

The hard part comes when colleagues ask "What should I do, can you give me some exercises or examples of what to actually do with him/her next time we meet?". Now this might seem easy enough. But "Sure, here is a list of sentences I like to use when I target various things with my patients" just seems blunt. We like to explain Why, How and When we use certain materials and also encourage our colleagues to think about these things during therapy.  So it's usually a loooong phone call..

A part of why we decided to start developing Sanapsis was that we wanted to reach out to colleagues and colleagues to be. We  wanted to be able to have these discussions all the time! In the Instructions of each exercise in Sanapsis you will find our guidelines on Why, How and When about the exercise and also ideas on how to expand the task outside the iPad. Sometimes we encourage the clinician to use other materials then the iPad all together!

We also also provide ideas in Sanapsis where to go next and what to try when one particular idea does not work well with your patient. We like to think of our instructions as bouncing ideas between colleagues, as many times that is the best way to learn to understand your patient better.

You can have a quick look at the instructions in our video about the Key Features of Sanapsis. Have fun and contact me with any questions. Let's talk! 

No feedback?

We have had a lot of questions about why Sanapsis gives no feedback to patients, such as a reward sound or green color when you get the task right and a horn or red color when you make a mistake. We are so happy when people ask that question because this is actually one of the key features in Sanapsis! 

Sanapsis only records the answers that the patient gives. For example: 

Listen to a story

The therapist reads the story displayed to the patient using a normal speech rate. After listening to the story, the patient is asked to determine what the topic of the text was. Each question has three choices, and the patient taps one of the answers to select it.

 When tapping the text, the answer changes its color to orange. It does not matter if the answer is right or wrong. Why? Because now you, as the skilled professional, can use this task to target many different goals instead of just what the developers had in mind! 

 Usually I like to do 3 or 4 stories and then go back and confirm if the answers were right or wrong. While the app does not tell the patient if the answer they chose the first time was right or wrong, I get to have them evaluate their own performance with me. I often ask the patient to verify the answers while helping them find the keywords on which to base their evaluation. It’s a great way to increase self-awareness and self-assessment in patients! 

 For those patients who need lower level tasks I especially enjoy this “no feedback” feature in: 

Word and picture. 

Sanapsis shows you one word and 2-4 pictures to which you match the word. Tapping a picture frames it with orange. 

 Again, Sanapsis accepts all answers that the patient gives whether correct or not. Now you, as a therapist, get to work with your patient to determine if the answer is correct! You can use this as a word-level reading task and have the patient work by themselves for a while. Then go through the tasks together after completion (yes, you can move back and forward between the completed tasks without losing data). Or, you can use this as a word-level comprehension task, where you read the word to your patient in your own voice and at your own pace, give feedback and learn from them. All without the anxiety of a buzzer going off if you touch the wrong picture and never actually knowing why it went off. 

 With Sanapsis you, as the therapist, determinate the pace and manner in which to work with your patient. As we know, some patients are faster, some need more time and repetition and this is all possible with an app that gives you the power of control.

CSHA2015

So, we were at Long Beach 5-8 March. What an event, guys, what an event. We met many great colleagues (and colleagues to be) and will be busy for weeks going through leaflets and brochures from the expo! What a information and fun filled hall that was. 

In addition to learning about things we were lucky to have swarms of colleagues at our booth to check out Sanapsis. And the feedback had us blushing! Thank you so much for your "Oh, really, that is cool" "OMG, I need this" and "Yes, that is something I really like, I like that" -comments! Also an extra sweet thank you for all of you who came back a couple of times and brought friends! "Here is the cool app I wanted to show you"-moments were the best! 

We were able to attend some of the sessions too. The selection was versatile and the ones we attended were inspirational and packed with information. Luckily we had a lot of pens, pencils and sticky notes from the expo to make notes with!  

And for all of you students out there - As promised at CSHA, I will soon write a post about why Sanapsis is the perfect tool for someone with little experience with adults. 

Everyday noise, noise everywhere.

Are you at home reading this? Stop for a minute and listen. What do you hear? Is it quiet and peaceful? Just the TV from the other room and maybe the dishwasher doing its stuff? Or just the AC blasting? These are background noises that we tend to get accustomed to and hardly notice them after a while. It’s easy to focus on reading a newspaper, or writing down a list for the grocery shop.

 For many of our patients with TBI or stroke, things are not as simple. Background noise, however slight in our ears, may be utterly disturbing or just distracting. For many of our patients, background noise may be distracting enough to restrain them from being able to finish a task, understand long passages of speech or gather their thoughts for a shopping list for the grocery store.  

 I have come across many patients who are able to perform quite well in a quiet therapy room, but performing the same task after I turn on the radio becomes almost impossible. Having done this with a patient, I often get mixed responses, and questions about what just happened and why.

 One of my favorite tricks to demonstrate my point is this. I give the patient two short, simple stories to read in a seemingly quiet room. After reading the first story, I give them noise cancelling headphones (good ones!) and ask them to turn them on and read the next story. Oh the difference! One of my patients described this experience “as a cool drink on a hot afternoon”. One patient could not function during the daytime at her home because the noise from the street - after trying on noise cancelling headphones she has been able to read school books during the day! No more need to stay up until the traffic has slowed down!

Now, background noise is not all bad. Erik X. Raj has written an excellent piece on the good about background noise, and I could not agree more. It is definitely something we should be working on with these patients when they are able to handle it.

To help patients understand the quality of their symptoms and find help my choice of weapon is Bose Quiet Comfort 15 headphones. Yes, they are expensive. But boy, are they good…

I use mine when working on an airplane and in a coffee shop, or just at home with all my appliances blaring. For me, it’s nice. For my patients, it can make a crucial difference in being able to fill in a form on their own and understand what they are reading or not being able to function without help.