Kelly is a Speech Language Pathologist with Select Rehab, Pennsylvania-based provider of on-site speech and cognition therapy services in senior living communities. Working in both short-term and long-term settings, Kelly helps her elderly clients with anything from chewing and swallowing to communication and memory. Kelly recommends interested students to reach out to a local pathologist to get a first-hand look at the industry!
Transcript
My name is Kelly Belts, and I am a Certified Speech Language Pathologist. So, the facility I work at is broken up into a dementia unit, a short term rehab, which those are the individuals that come from the acute care setting, with potential that their goal is to go home. So they'll come in for additional rehab services. And then we have a long term care side, which is those individuals who unfortunately that has become their home at this stage of their life. But for my day, usually runs about eight to four. Eight thirty to four thirty, depending on what time I get in. I see individuals for breakfast and lunch rounds, especially if they're on a speech program for swallowing dysphagia. Then I kind of fill in those gaps in between those two rounds with cognitive therapy, if we have someone coming in who's had a stroke, just some memory loss, kind of doing preventative measures with dementia population. There's care plan meetings, which we meet with families. Nursing conversations. So it really could be an ailment at first or a diagnosis. Perfect example is someone comes in and they might have lost their dentures when they're in the hospital. And they are like oh well I don't understand why they need it. Well, my job hopefully is to have them be educated on well, you know, Uncle Joe was having his dentures in the hospital and then all of a sudden they lost them, and now he's having a hard time chewing his food. It's, you know, my job is to keep your uncle safe. I don't want him choking, I want him to have a good intake. What we could work on is trying to find the best level of diet for him at this given moment. Until either they find his teeth and they bring 'em, or you know, he doesn't have them any more, and this is where we'll have to be. So it really all depends on what level I'd be working with someone and what I'd be based on, but it's really just trying to get a good comradery between family and myself, and if they have questions I always leave an open door policy. If you have any questions as we're going through please call me, please let me know, we'll work together on it. I found that once you do that, rather than just going in, hi I'm Kelly, I'm the speech language pathologist, this is what we're here for, and we don't give that education, there could be more resistance in that.
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