4 Outpatient Speech Therapy Tips For Beginner SLPs

Hi! I have been a speech therapist for 14+ years and 6 of those years I spent in the outpatient speech therapy setting. I worked in outpatient for post-acute traumatic brain injury. This setting holds a near and dear place to my heart. I grew alongside with my patients in this setting. I am here to share a few tips and tricks to get you started, so you can not only survive, but thrive!

This post is about outpatient speech therapy

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1. Organization Skills | Outpatient Speech Therapy

Outpatient setting the patients are going to be medically stable. However, they still may need to work around doctors appointments, new medications, PT, OT, Speech. Let's focus on getting that organized with a calendar, planner, timers, alarms, medication reminders.

2. Focus On Community Integration | Outpatient Speech Therapy

This means being able to navigate the community safely, speak to the store attendants, obtain what they need. This could encompass making grocery lists, figuring out schedules to find a good time to go, arranging transportation, figuring out how long they need (it will usually be longer than before). If you have the chance to go into the community, do this! If not, practice navigating the building or area you are in. Espeically if the client is now in a wheel chair and may need different reminders.

3. Return To Work | Outpatient Speech Therapy

This step may involve returning to the work setting. However, if the patient is limited, they may need accommodations. For instance, if they tend to get overwhelmed they may benefit from increased amount of breaks. If standing is an issue, a remote job where they can work from home might be helpful, so they can sit or an office job.

4. Return To Hobbies | Outpatient Speech Therapy

This is an important and often overlooked part of the process. In the facility that I worked on, we had a dedicated specialist called a recreational therapist who assisted in this part of the process. If they are not able to return to their hobbies, can you help them discover new interests. You can work this into speech therapy by researching new hobbies, writing them down, having them explain them to you, going to a store and budgeting to see how much getting started would cost, problem solving through how to fit it into the schedule or working on self-awareness on what kind of accommodations are needed to make this hobby successful. Sorry for the run-on sentence.

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