Please allow me to re-introduce myself

By November of 2024, I will have been kicking this blog can down the road for twelve years! Since audiences evolve, as do bloggers' points of view, I thought I might redraw an outline around myself to explain where this chronicle of speech - language pathology/communication sciences and disorders (CSD) is going. We who work in the trenches of the CSD fields, we're ready to celebrate! ASHA, our national credentialling and professional education organization, will be 100 years old in 2025. CSD has become much more vigorous and valuable a group of professions over the past century. By "professions", I include speech-language pahtology (SLP), audiology, education of the deaf, and speech and hearing sciences. And more of us are needed: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noted in its Occupational Outlook Handbook (March 6, 2024), that positions for speech - language pathologists were estimated to be 19% higher over the decade ahead - "much higher", per the Handbook entry, than the average for all occupations. In that light, I want this blog to continue to tout CSD professions, presenting what we do so that "T.C. Mits" (the celebrated man in the street**) gets it. And wants to know more about it!

I'm a speech - language pathologist, in my 41st year of practice after experiences in the preschool, Head Start, public school, residential DD facility for severe/profound impairment, day preschool for DD children, acute hospital, inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab, skilled nursing facility, independent living, assisted living, memory care and home health care worlds. I'm currently on staff of a home health agency in the Midwest U.S., working at a "casual" or PRN status. I like this pace, honestly. Not working full - time anymore: it gives me space and pace to focus on the caseload that I can acquire, providing the highest - quality service to everyone I see. Gone are the days when I might travel over 150 miles, or see up to 17 persons in eight hours (and that's before documentation). I enjoy home health now, because I can be trusted as "the expert" among the multidisciplinary staff who can work autonomously. I can also be trusted to model efficient and clear communication with all the team working with any of my patients. The team? The nurses, therapists, the patient, her/his support circles and professional stakeholders.

The decades have served up for me, a lot of lessons about what brings "success", working in the CSD professions. After time in a number of different work settings, in various areas of the United States (Mississippi, Iowa, Louisiana, Idaho and the present-day), some principles seem to survive in importance. They include: * The SLP's workplace effort is largely devoted to meeting documentation quality standards and timelines. Clinical practice skills become automatic, self - managed by the clinician outside work hours. * The SLP must be proactive in managing each patient episode, given the tendency for case managers to supply a minimum number of visits for a discipline. "Utilization", one of the current buzz words for the practice of keeping our number of visits allowed to a minimum - so we will get paid. * The SLP must be proactive in educating team members, stakeholders and the public, in a constant cycle of marketing and training those who might support the communication/cognition/swallowing needs of the population we serve. I wish sometimes, that I did not have the ego that seems to propel me outside the clinical world to toot a horn (mostly French). It can get embarrassing, when the stream of toilet paper magically appears, stuck to your oblivous heel and eye. But someone told me recently, "You write so well, that....". So I've been bitten by the bug to continue blogging about CSD, and why we do what we do. What do I want for the fields of CSD, particularly for my home field of speech - language pathology? * I want the depth and breadth of who we are, where we live and work, and what we can bring to the quality of life of persons we serve; all that known as well or better than what Kim K. wore to Albertsons last week. I'm tired of our being the best kept healthcare and education secret in town. * I want SLP's to be involved in contributing to the health of populations; with CSD's current investment in selected knowledge bases e.g., social determinants of health, health literacy, and interprofessional collaboration, I feel we are on our way in linking up with public health - as our sisters and brothers in audiology are managing to do, quite nicely. * I want our young professionals, as well as those earnest, energetic and excited young people who want a future full of purpose - nope, sorry, riches not easy to find - to bring their skills and their sass to play in our field! If you want to guess this blogger's name, please look over the posts preceding this one.

** Not to be missed: _The Education of T.C. Mits: What Modern Mathematics Means to You_, by Lieber, Lieber and Mazur....first encountered in the library at E.E. Bass Junior High School, Greenville, MS, way back when....