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What do SLTs do in palliative care?

The authors of this article highlight that the number of older people has increased significantly in the last two decades, and the number of people over 85 has doubled in Australia since 1996. They attribute this to improved lifestyle factors...

Mental practice could be a great COVID-19 solution for delivering swallow rehab

Motor imagery is defined as the process of voluntarily generating a mental image of a motor function without actually doing said function. Mental practice (MP) is the process of doing this repeatedly; practising it. There is some evidence that this...

Till death do us part: the role of the speech and language therapists in palliative care

Increasingly, speech and language therapists are being involved in end-of-life and palliative care. This study reports on a three-phase project to explore this in the context of the Australian healthcare system. In phase one, the authors described a scoping review...

Swallowing and breathing: speech and language therapy

Swallowing difficulties are a common comorbidity in just over a quarter of people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Given the associated risks of aspiration and exacerbation of COPD symptoms, speech and language therapists (SLTs) can offer valuable guidance...

Feel what you say: a framework to demonstrate the emotional response to aphasia is intertwined with the emotional toll

The authors start this paper by flagging a recent study demonstrating that speech and language therapists in clinical practice rarely have time to focus on emotional issues in relation to aphasia. Yet, people with aphasia describe the close relationship between...

Strengthen your communication: better conversations can reduce the risk of frailty

Our population is ageing and, with this, the incidence of frailty is increasing. Frailty is defined as increased vulnerability to stressors resulting in adverse outcomes. Stressors can include communication and swallowing difficulties, yet these are poorly recognised. Management of communication...

Four lessons: the development of speech and language therapy research for people with dementia care

Dementia has been described as the biggest expanded caseload for speech and language therapists. Everyone with dementia experiences communication difficulties. The late Prof Audrey Holland revolutionised the work of speech-language pathologists in this field through four key lessons. Lesson 1:...