Adventurous

That's right. I said it. Practicing speech - language pathology requires an adventurous soul. As Merriam - Webster implies, speech - language pathologists are "disposed to seek adventure or to cope with the new and unknown".

You may have that day received numerous referrals for swallowing, many of them the aftermath of a single coughing episode for each person. Your treatment day may be marinated in boilerplate writing, to help keep the doors open. Meeting a milepost for your day, alongside that of a colleague, you may be asked "How many (patient appointments) do you have left?" Rapid rewrites of your daily schedule, require your turning on a dime to meet changing attentional demands by our customers. Get that documentation done before the end of business. Make the telephone calls. Attend the meetings, scheduled and impromptu. You have a productivity target to meet. Make sure you have all you need, to do the night work that lifts your work to the highest level of quality. Get it done. Do it!

You can hear in the background the pounding rhythm of "Working for a Living", by Huey Lewis and the News.The thumping; the pressure. There's always a need to strive, to push and to grasp the next rung on the ladder - surge ahead on the long staircase that is the rehab journey, to arrive at the next landing to gain perspective. What makes speech-language pathology work, adventurous? How does the CSD clinician prepare for the adventurous life? How does a professional plan for success, in such a workaday world?

I see an individual clinical encounter as dripping with adventure. Bold? Risky? Speech-language pathology? After all, you as the person's clinician guide persons served to tap energies they scarcely recognize within themselves. Changes in bodily function have apparently occurred out of the blue, and the person is often clueless how to remedy such a catastrophic event.

You are well prepared by training to take the arduous journey that evaluation and treatment represent. Your adventure begins with leading the person beyond her limits of perception, of motor power or of reasoning. Does she find the strength to recover from being lost in a dark wood, not able to affect change in her skills without your help?

With the evaluation done, there is the refocusing of the quest to achieve the person's goals. When the person served can contribute energy to identifying and clarifying the goals, the road to reaching them is clear. A clear path to the person's goals helps give agency to the person, and makes her the one wearing the armor.

An adventurous quest to achieve treatment goals may still bring many challenges; physical, psychological, financial, spiritual, and so forth. There are hills to climb, torrents to ford, monsters to confront and territory to claim. The person served learns to recognize decision points to be met during her treatment program. She gains confidence for acting as it is needed, and when it is needed.

The quest may, regardless, seem contrived, complex, cumbersome and "not real life". The person served may sometimes say, "I'm never going to use this". The adventure of a person's treatment program will stand the test of time when done right - when the goals sought after are firmly in hand, when the future is easily imagined, and quests are yielded to others more in need.