Journal Reviews
How quality improvement helped to create local guidelines for good tracheostomy care
Significant morbidity and mortality is associated with tracheostomy insertion. A complex, multistep process exists to help patients towards decannulation. This process is often complicated by patient comorbidities, discontinuity of care and communication as patients move through hospital, and variable experience...
Speech and language therapists have the skills to provide all practisable supports in compliance with Mental Capacity Act guidance
Deciding where to live can be complex. However, people with communication difficulties can find this even more difficult, and they are often completed excluded from the process. In the past, people with complex communication difficulties may have been placed in...
Are you aware of communication partner training?
Increased isolation is a common sequalae of communication difficulties associated with traumatic brain injury. This is often because both the person and the people around the person are unsure how to adjust their conversation behaviours to compensate for these difficulties....
How do you know what you don’t know?
Auditory processing disorder (APD) has been a subject for discussion for the last 20 years. Though the body of research is growing, it still lacks cohesive diagnostic and management criteria. Similar surveys on APD have taken place in other countries....
Are you a man or a mouse?
Ok so the phrase is about bravery – however, this paper considers the differences in auditory cortex connectivity, cognition and emotion between humans and mice. The study began with 21 mice, but usable data were obtained from only 16. Notably,...
Can writing reveal the timeline for future dementia diagnoses?
Frontotemporal dementia is the term for a group of dementias affecting behaviour and language. Thirty percent of FTD cases are associated with autosomal dominant mutations. There are three main genes that account for the majority of these genetic FTD cases...
How to feel happier: kindness, gratitude and self-care
The number of students experiencing mental health difficulties has risen dramatically, sometimes attributed to the widespread intrusion of social media in our lives, increasing social pressures on performance, and recent other societal factors. This article describes a study undertaken with...
Starry eyed?
Attentive listening and active listening skills suggest that eye movement is an important factor in subject engagement. Indeed, when asked, AI suggests gaze is held for 70% of the time when listening. Although the route of this percentage is unclear,...
How do you actually get therapists to do the therapy you need them to?
Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that affects approximately a third of people who have a stroke and for which speech and language therapy is the main treatment. However, there are known gaps between evidence-based recommendations and the delivery of...
Translanguaging: an integrated and culturally valid approach for speech and language therapy practice
This study advocates the need for speech and language therapists to understand and advocate for translanguaging practices within their day-to-day clinical work with children with communication difficulties. Translanguaging derives from the Welsh term ‘trawsiethu’, which was first introduced in 1994...
The risks of misjudging African American dialects as lesser!
Healthcare inequalities in multicultural societies, such as the UK, are becoming increasingly apparent. They arise via a complex interplay of factors, with socioeconomic deprivation, structural biases and specific cultural and biological risk factors all contributing to disparities. There is ample...
Drooling: what is it like to be unable to manage your own saliva?
Drooling in Parkinson’s is associated with less frequent and inefficient swallowing, resulting in a build-up of saliva in the mouth that then moves beyond the lips. It often causes discomfort as the skin becomes sore, and results in embarrassment. The...
