Exams are done, and for most university students it’s time to relax, go on holiday….it’s not our turn quite yet. We have a couple more assessments coming up, including our clinical exam where we show a video of ourselves doing therapy and reflect on how the session went, but for now it’s all go with our new placements.

My placement partner and I are working with a London stroke rehabilitation community team, seeing clients who are all between 1 and 12 weeks post-stroke, some of whom come to clinic for intervention but most of whom we see in their homes. Most of them have some difficulties with their language – with understanding, reading, writing, speaking, or a mixture of the above – and some of them also have difficulties with their swallowing. As it’s a 3-day a week placement, it’s a closer experience to actually doing the job of an SLT, and the rate at which we learn feels much faster. We’re given our own caseload – with supervision – and opportunity very early on to be independent with the therapy we plan and deliver. Yes, that is pretty scary. Yes, I slightly feel like I’m faking it right now….but this is how I know I learn best and you very quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t, in terms of intervention strategies and assessment rules.

So, we go in, do some published and some informal assessments. These might include asking someone about how their communication has changed since their stroke, listening to their voice and watching how well they tolerate swallowing different food and drinks. From our findings, we put together some suggestions for the client of things they might want to work on and go from there. A huge part of this role is working with the service-user to develop skills that are functional and relevant to them; it’s definitely not about us telling them what we think they should be working on. Visits are sometimes joint with occupational therapists (who provide rehab for functional tasks like cooking and handling money) and physiotherapists (walking, mobility) and are often followed up by Rehab Support Workers (RSWs) who visit the client every day to practise their therapy exercises. Understanding how a team works together and liaising with colleagues is one of the criteria used to check whether we’re meeting clinical requirements for the course, so it’s important we ask for and make the most of opportunities to do this. It also means that when we’re working in a team of allied health professionals, we know who to ask for advice about different things and also different help that clients can get for different rehabilitation.

I’m not sure what I expected from this placement; I knew that I was coming in with no adult experience but I don’t think I was prepared for how hectic it has felt. I’d forgotten what it’s like to be in a setting that is totally new. We’ve had our brain injury and aphasia, but I am definitely the kind of person who needs to do something before I feel like I am anywhere close to understanding it. I’ve been trying to take every opportunity to dive in and do things like formal assessments for language, oro-motor assessments (examining the muscles in the face and how they move) and running some of my own therapy sessions with clients. With one year left, I’m definitely thinking of placement more as an opportunity to test-drive jobs I might be interested in doing and settings that might work for me. With only a couple of weeks to go, time is suddenly going very quickly…