Speech Pathology And Audiology : Science Behind Our Voices

During my interview with Speech Pathologist, Deborah Kirsch, I learned countless details about the Speech Pathology career field. When we first began talking, I learned that Mrs. Kirsch works out of a company called “Professional Therapy Services”, where she is contracted out to work for “Eunice Smith Nursing Home” which is located in Alton, Illinois. She has been working at this facility for about a year. She is a newly found graduate from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and she graduated in May 2011. Another thing that I learned about Mrs. Kirsch is that she originally did not go to school to become a speech pathologist, this was a career that she found later in life. After she had graduated from SIUE, the first time with a bachelors in Psychiatry, she started working at a nursing home around this area. She came to know a Speech Pathologist that worked there and she quickly found the field very fascinating. She had always been driven to help others, and she witnessed some of the exercises being done with individuals at the nursing home and decided to go back to school to get her masters in Speech Pathology.

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

Many people would like to make a difference, not only in their own life, but in others’ lives as well. Deepak Chopra once said, “Everyone has a purpose in life…a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.” All of us, at one point in our lives, have to make the difficult decision of the goals we want to work towards. We all have certain goals, standards, and expectations of ourselves. Not everyone will figure out what they want to be right away, and some will know from the very beginning. My plan for my life is helping others through Speech Language

The career of speech pathology offers many opportunities in a variety of different settings. For those who are willing to tackle the challenge of advanced education and have a passion for working with others, speech pathology could be a great career choice. Through my individual research and interaction with other Speech Pathologists,

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).

CSD 363 is a practicum course that gives students the opportunity to provide schools with free speech and hearing screenings. This class is mutually beneficial, seeing that students have an undergraduate opportunity to start practicing skills typically developed in graduate school, and that families receive valuable services for free. The screenings given are comprised of two parts: the Fluharty Speech and Language test, and an audiology pure tone screening including a look in the ears with an otoscope. Under the supervision of a licensed supervisor, students will be giving these screenings and making recommendations about further evaluations if necessary.

Since many measures of analysis were found for pre- and post-operatory hearing outcomes (scales and tests), rendering it difficult to compare the results of each author.

Relaxation exercises were also taught to students because studies have shown that stress contributes to the maintenance of a disorder (e.g., Dietrich & Abbott, 2012). Students then used those techniques with their clients, regardless of communication disorder, who reportedly benefited from those relaxation exercises before their therapy session with improved performance both during and after the therapy session. Students were trained to use the instrumentation equipment in the Speech and Hearing Lab. These included the VisiPitch, Phonatory Aerodynamic System (PAS), Computerized Speech Lab (CSL), Nasometer, manometer, and the See-Scape. This equipment was useful for assessment of phonatory, resonatory and respiratory function. To demonstrate use of the instruments, students were assigned a lab project in which they worked in pairs to simulate a voice client with some form of dysphonia. They were required to practice using the equipment, write a report on the results and interpret their

Program directors’ decision to only test frequencies at 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz, while excluding 6000 Hz, will inevitably miss students with a hearing loss in higher frequencies. Assessing the efficacy of the hearing screening program led researchers to make recommendations for other universities to implement. Examples include, advocating the importance of follow-up to students to improve return rates, and having proper sound treatment to enhance screening results. Finally, adding 6000 Hz into the screening program may help to accurately identify students with early signs of high frequency hearing loss. In conclusion, the study was useful in acknowledging weaknesses such as assessing the low follow-up rates, noticing high levels of noise, and examining the impact on results when hearing screening programs choose to omit 6000 Hz. Recognizing the limitations of the hearing screening program allows for given recommendations to strengthen the efficacy of existing hearing screening

Evaluation of vocal function was determined by acoustically analyzing vocal loudness (recorded as sound pressure level) and inflection (recorded as semitone standard deviation). The average sound pressure level (SPL) and semitones standard deviation (STSD) of each group on all tasks were obtained and the differences between the means were statistically analyzed using a two-factor repeated measures ANOVA (Ramig et al., 2001). Data was collected by a primary investigator that did not administer treatment and was blind to which treatment group each subject was in (Ramig et al., 2001). In order to determine measurement reliability, 20% of the data obtained were reanalyzed and it was found that “repeated measures of SPL and STSD data yielded correlation coefficients greater than 0.97” (Ramig et al., 2001, p.

Audiometric tests will be conducted by a licensed or certified health professional that will use industry standard equipment

Furthermore, low-frequency hearing alone is not sufficient to achieve open set speech recognition, since discrimination of most consonants and vowels requires access to higher frequencies (Hornesby & Ricketts, 2006). Even when functional levels of speech perception are achieved, however, devices are often rejected by users because of excessive feedback resulting from high levels of gain, and the requirement of uncomfortable occluding earmolds (Turner, 2006). Furthermore, discrete models of hearing aids such as the open-ear style are not powerful enough to aid severe-profound HL (Johnson, 2012).

It is proven that using QuickSin for speech in noise testing will help determine if the patient would benefit from directional mics vs. omnidirectional mics and other features in their hearing aid to better their speech discrimination in noise. Other procedures done in PEI, such as Verafit and LDLs, are also confirmed by evidence based practice. What this means is that these tests were researched and proven to be best practice when fitting hearing aids. These test are recognized to be essential to the hearing aid fitting and the success of the

In the last decade, the availability of computer technology has prompted many research efforts in the area of lung sounds and

With exception of Sweeney and Sell (2008), all articles maintained credibility of their results by determining inter-rater reliability of at minimum two experienced speech language pathologists. However, only one paper took into consideration the comparison experience level of the evaluator to accuracy of the ratings (Brunnegård, Lohmander, & van Doorn, 2012). Brunnegård et al., (2012) demonstrated that an experienced speech language pathologist is necessary in yielding valid ratings. Determining the need for an experienced evaluator allowed for some of the variability in perceptual ratings to be accounted for. Another consideration is there is no standard scale used for evaluation. Various Likert scales ranging in 4 point, 5 point and 6 point scales were used among the current literature under review. The variation found makes it difficult to compare perceptual ratings across studies and across clinical settings. Consequently, findings show that subjective nature of perceptual assessment can lead to errors in assessment. Therefore, in recent years finding objective instruments to measure hypernasality have been of primary concern. These methods often use various acoustic parameters to establish a standardized measure of hypernasality.