Script Training Using Telepractice with Two Adults With Chronic Non-fluent Aphasia

Two male participants with chronic (> 2 years), non-fluent aphasia and their family members participated in script training using videoconferencing.  Functional scripts were developed by people with aphasia (PWA) and their family members. Accuracy of scripts was measured by total target words produced per turn.  Participant 1 with Broca’s aphasia produced scripts with 0% accuracy pre-treatment and 87.5% accuracy post-treatment. Participant 2 with Transcortical Motor aphasia produced scripts with 20.2% accuracy pre-treatment and 63.5% accuracy post-treatment.  Pre- and post-questionnaires for communication effectiveness and the use of telepractice for speech therapy indicated improvements in answering yes/no questions, participating in conversations with strangers, and increasing confidence and satisfaction with technology delivered treatment.  The use of videoconferencing to deliver script training appears beneficial for individuals with chronic aphasia

Best Practices for Building Interprofessional Telehealth: Report of a Conference

The Arizona Biomedical Research Centre (ABRC) has funded a series of workshops and conferences since 2016 to build the capacity of local, tribal, and state agencies, healthcare delivery organizations, and non-governmental organizations to engage in meaningful research related to health disparities. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telehealth has dramatically increased, particularly in nursing, occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), and speech-language pathology (SLP). The purpose of this paper is to summarize the presentations and discussion from the conference titled “Telerehabilitation and Telepractice: An Interprofessional Conference to Build Connections and Best Practices,” held remotely on March 4-5, 2021. Terminology and concepts from the conference were debated, modified, and refined, based on an interprofessional audience. Presenters at the conference, all leaders in their field, discussed the current status of telehealth in their professions, including best practices, challenges, future trends, and research needs

Communication abilities and work reentry following traumatic brain injury

The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine if a single communication measure or combination of measures could discriminate employed from unemployed individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Twenty adult subjects (ten employed and ten unemployed), one to four years post injury, with comparable severity of injury and type of work participated in the study. Each subject was given ten communication tests measuring: auditory processing (Filtered Words, Auditory Figure Ground, Competing Words, and Competing Sentences subtests of the SCAN-A); the effects of speaking under time pressure (FAS and Rapid Automatized Naming); production of oral language (local coherence); language ability (Aphasia Quotient portion of the Western Aphasia Battery); and functional verbal reasoning ability (Scheduling and Planning an Event subtests of the Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning (FAVR)). Results revealed that when a combination of three communication tests, the Scheduling subtest of the FAVR, and the Filtered Words and Competing Sentences subtests of the SCAN-A, was used, the model correctly classified 85% of employed and unemployed individuals. The findings suggest that both impairment and disability-based tasks (i.e. those measuring activities that reflect daily communication) may be more revealing than the impairment-level tasks alone that frequently appear in the TBI and work re-entry literature. Impairment and disability level communication tasks may provide functional and practical information, which can be used to assist in work re-entry

Facial Affect Recognition Training Through Telepractice: Two Case Studies of Individuals with Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury

The use of a modified Facial Affect Recognition (FAR) training to identify emotions was investigated with two case studies of adults with moderate to severe chronic (> five years) traumatic brain injury (TBI).  The modified FAR training was administered via telepractice to target social communication skills.  Therapy consisted of identifying emotions through static facial expressions, personally reflecting on those emotions, and identifying sarcasm and emotions within social stories and role-play.  Pre- and post-therapy measures included static facial photos to identify emotion and the Prutting and Kirchner Pragmatic Protocol for social communication.  Both participants with chronic TBI showed gains on identifying facial emotions on the static photos.