The Handoff

The whistle is being blown today on the series of posts about being a better SLP. Time out while we explore something happening on the football field, which also happens in every SLP practice when a staff member has a day off.

It's the "handoff"! When another staff is covering the caseload which is usually assigned to you, there is an acute need to communicate clearly to that covering clinician what you think is necessary for a successful treatment session. Of course, there already is the treatment plan or plan of care. This document outlines the short term and long term objectives of your encounter with the person served, and guides you to develop activities that helps the person work on the goals. If you are the SLP who regularly sees this person, you may have collected a basket of activities. If you are the clinician who is at work to cover the caseload, you should not be expected to generate all the activities yourself. Why?

The covering clinician does not have the relationship formed that you, the SLP of record, had formed. The therapeutic alliance with the covering clinician might consist of a cursory review: "Are you pleased with what you've accomplished in speech therapy? What exercises have helped you the most?" If the person served does not give you clear direction about the activities that have been used, and the handoff instructions are not sufficiently clear - you can resort to a packaged approach to meeting the goals assigned by the plan of care:

Even though the covering SLP may have used this packaged material scores of times, there is little predictive power in your guessing that an activity you have used with THIS DIAGNOSIS, will work with THIS PERSON. Your handoff report to the covering clinician should include some description of what works; for example:

"Reminisce with her about the family days. Use the photo album kept near her bed to point out the family members, and describe activities in the photos. When she is talking about her family, she is very fluent".

As much as sixty seconds might be required to give this extra bit of data to the covering clinician; the result may be as glorious as points on the board.