Empathy: The Human Connection To Patient Care

Originally, I was drawn to speech pathology after my sister’s diagnosis of Autism at the age of three. Watching Diane struggle with language development and acquisition while other children seemed to grasp these skills naturally is what initially sparked my interest in helping families like my own. At the start of my junior year, I set out to obtain experiences working with different populations. Toward the latter half of junior year, I became involved as a clerical volunteer at the Sacramento Scottish Rite Childhood Language Center. By senior year, I was balancing a full course load alongside three volunteer experiences. In addition to Scottish Rite Childhood Language Center, I divided my time between tutoring at a neighboring elementary school in the Twin Rivers School District and serving as an intern at the Autism Center for Excellence (ACE). During my undergraduate experience, I welcomed the opportunity to work with students that struggled with literacy, language, and pragmatic skills. After graduation, it was my goal to obtain additional experience in the field as a speech-language pathology assistant.

The opportunity to observe the work overview of a Speech Pathologist, has tremendously solidified my interest in this field. At the Diana Rogovin Speech Center at Brooklyn College, I observed clients of various ages with different speech language disorders including articulation, language, voice, fluency and accent modification. Observing clinicians at the speech center gave me the opportunity to learn how important client-clinician interaction is for the session and how essential it is to build a good relationship with the client. Although I learned the

Keaunna Knox has been a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) since 2007, and has worked ever since 2000 with children with special needs who had speech and language disorders. She began as an “Instructional/Speech Aide” at Pasadena Unified School District working with children with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities. All the students she worked with had speech and language disorders, and, since the Districts therapy was overloaded Keaunna implemented the communication goals she wrote. Based on that experience and many others, Keaunna decided to enroll at Cal State Los Angeles to pursue her professional career in teaching. She received her Master’s in Mild-Moderate Disabilities in Special Education from Cal State Los Angeles and a second

My intensive Speech Language Pathology coursework at California State University- Fresno has provided me with the skills to implement treatment plans, assist during speech and language assessments, and keep formal documentation of client’s progress in speech therapy. These are the necessary skills required to be an effective Speech Language Pathology Assistant and will make me as asset to have in the school speech setting.

The qualities I possess to make me a successful speech language pathologist include compassion, open-mindedness, knowing how to be a team player and how to live out the FISH philosophy which is an approach dealing with workplace issues. Compassion is important to have in order to be patient with my future clients. Throughout my college years, I served on the executive council for my sorority for two years as Vice President of Member Development. While sitting in those meetings, I learned how to be open-minded to others’ opinions on certain topics being discussed. I also had to meet with people who were having a hard time maintaining good membership status. Sitting down and talking to those individuals taught me to be objective about the individual’s circumstance and to be as fair as possible. Not only does a speech language pathologist need to be skilled in speech treatment but also with counseling the parents and loved ones of the client who feel hopeless and helpless. Being empathetic helps create a trusting relationship between the clinician, client and family. Another quality of a great speech pathologist is being able to be a team player. Most cases require the collaboration of the speech pathologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, schoolteacher, paraprofessional, orthodontist, audiologists, and social services to

The importance of empathy in any helping profession, medical or social, cannot be overstated. The workers that exemplified it in their practice did the best that they could with their limited resources.

According to the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) 2016 School Survey, Speech Pathologists rated the amount of paperwork, high workload/caseload size, and limited time for collaboration and budget constraints among their greatest challenges. Immense pressure is placed on the SLPs in a school setting. Children with learning disabilities have a multitude of different needs, and for many, thirty-minute therapy sessions are not enough time to adequately address their problems. Furthermore, in many schools, Speech-Language Pathologists have had to make up some or all of missed student sessions themselves without any substitute coverage. This in turn has increased group therapy sizes which compromises the quality

Through speech pathology, people are reached and shown compassion who are typically considered outcasts in society. SLPs work with individuals who are struggling with various sets of problems and help to solve those problems through undivided attention and spirits of patience and willingness to aid people with speech, language, and mental impairments. I believe this would be a good career fit for me due to my heart for people and my teaching spirit. My mom’s perspective of me pursuing a career as an SLP is that it would be a good fit due to my kind and gentle spirit and conduciveness with working with struggling individuals. I also have an immediate family legacy of multiple speech pathologists that work in both the medical and educational fields which increases my knowledge and familiarity with the career. While I believe that speech pathology would ultimately be a good fit for me, I tend to struggle with patience, a key component of working as an SLP, which is a challenge that I would have to work to overcome in order fulfill my role as a speech pathologist.

Some of the duties of a speech pathologist are, but are not limited to, evaluate patients’ levels of speech, language, or swallowing difficulty, identify treatment options, teach patients how to make sounds and improve their voices, work with patients to develop and strengthen the muscles used to swallow, and counsel patients and families on how to cope with communication and swallowing disorders (Duties, www.bls.org, 2015). ‘If the speech-language pathologists work in medical facilities, they work with physicians and surgeons, social workers, psychologists, and other healthcare workers’ (Duties, www.bls.org, 2015).

While obtaining observation hours for ASHA, I had the privilege of viewing therapy sessions of students at Oscar Smith Middle School. I never had the opportunity of meeting children with disabilities personally until I began my observation hours. During a treatment session, two young ladies with Intellectual Disability (ID) captured my attention and changed my perspective on the part Speech Language Pathologists (SLP) play in providing these students with the critical skills to communicate with their special and general education instructors and others they may encounter through their environment. Witnessing the middle school students’ interactions with their SLP and myself gave me a glance at the rewarding aspects

Healthcare professionals who should learn to exhibit empathy range from doctors and nurses to therapists and pharmacists. While it has been established that a

This can be one of the most rewarding and exciting parts of the job, because the pathologist has the opportunity to see what makes individuals the way they are. Speech pathologists work with other people that are also helping the individual to create a holistic report regarding physical, mental, and emotional state. From there, the pathologist makes a plan specific to individual needs. In a clinical setting, this plan is presented to other healthcare providers and is used to write a report for insurance at a later time. In a public school setting, this plan can be presented to other staff, but is generally kept until a report is generated. The primary role of the pathologist is to work with individuals to progress and achieve skills in speech and communication that were previously impossible. Therapy is dependent on the assessment and subsequent plan, but usually involves meeting consistently with patients, using appropriate methods to overcome difficulties in communication. The final responsibility a speech pathologist has is writing reports. The type of report is dependent on what specific job the pathologist is engaged in, however, all reports are expected to be objective, professional and

A speech language pathologist, otherwise known as an SLP, deals with many people throughout their career, which includes patients who do and do not want to receive assistance for their disorders. Sometimes a patient might refuse because they are too young to understand why they need therapy, and adults might refuse the aid of an SLP because they do not find it necessary to receive treatment for the speech, language, or hearing disorder. To address these problems SLP’s will have to give the proper help to the patient as needed. For a child, the SLP might use toys or activities to get the child involved in a talking atmosphere. In a adult’s case, it would be ideal to give the patient as much information as possible in order to let them fully

Empathy is defined as the ability to communicate an understanding of a client’s feelings, and is a crucial component of the helping relationship (Boggs. 2011, p.106). Empathy is an essential concept to nursing practice as it allows the nurse to gain perspective in order to provide appropriate actions and interventions significant to that patient’s individual experience. In Tilda Shalof’s “A Nurses’ Story”, the author, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit (ICU), struggles with a particularly difficult patient case and must reflect upon her own values and subsequent judgments in order to provide adequate nursing care.

Social Justice is defined as “the equal distribution of opportunities, rights, and responsibility despite differences in physical traits and/or beliefs and behavior. It is an international and multifaceted issue that fights for better treatment and equality of people.” (“Pachamama Alliance,” 2017). According to this definition, my understanding of social justice is that it is a way to advocate for other individuals in order to assist their needs in society. For example, I would want to advocate for Hispanic mothers and children who have been through abuse. My empathy towards this group started because of my personal history with an abusive father who suffered from alcoholism. “Empathy involves thinking about a person and the challenges he or she is facing and coming to understand what it is like for that person to have that experience.” (Cameron & Keenan, 2013, p. 72).