Speech Language Pathologist, Lehigh Valley Health Network

My name is Stara Skolebeski, I'ma 2005 communications sciences and disorders graduate. I'm currently a speech language pathologist at the Lee High Valley health network at Cedar Crest, working in in patient acute rehab, primarily with patients that have suffered a stroke, some form of brain injury, neurological disease, and other types of medical conditions, so forth like that. So speech pathologists work really from birth to death. Some speech therapists work in the NICU, some work with early intervention with burst of three, working on those pre feeding skills, pre communication skills, we work in Elementary schools, working on language development, speech development, social skills, and then in the adult population, we work a lot with neurological degenerative diseases, neurological influences, such as strokes, someone who has suffered a brain injury, gunshot wound, anything that would cause an infarct in the brain, that would allow them to maybe lose their ability to comprehend spoken language, their ability to express verbally written communication, reading comprehension, their voice, their swallow. We really encompass a lot so basically if you have a communication deficit, or are unable to swallow, or remember something a speech language pathologist is who will be consulted and working with you. So with our patients, we'll do an initial evaluation assessing their swallowing functions, their oral motor function, how their lips and their tongue move to speak and also to swallow. We'll assess them with a variety of textures of food, anywhere from like a puree, a baby food, to something chopped an diced like ham, or up to a regular sandwich that you and I would be eating. We'll also assess the liquid consistency to see if it's safely going down the correct way or if it's entering the airway. If there are any causes or any symptoms that we see that it's a safety concern, we'll modify that diet allowing them to have the safest diet available. And then we'll also assess their voice, their vocal quality, their loudness, their pitch, their ability to follow directions, answer questions, express their basic wants and needs, their safety awareness, their ability to get up from a chair and go into the bathroom safely and with out falling and making the correct decisions. So my typical day I arrive at the hospital around 7:30 in the morning, I treat my patients, do the housekeeping, documentation, try to leave around, 4-4:30, some days you leave early, some days you leave at 6 o'clock at night and that's just kind of the nature of healthcare but, you know usually I have a patient every hour, treating them with a meal, treating them with memory, and just kind of seeing how it goes. We have some pretty good flexibility and we learn what our patients need, and we get to establish a rapport with them so we get to see how much they can take in a day, if we can push them a little further, or if we need to push back and just wait for the next day.