I do speech therapy at a university so the person that treats me is a student clinician.  So on Tuesday I had speech therapy and I was doing(saying) some exercise and she asked “How do you think that was?”  I answered “that sucked!”  We both cracked up and then I told her not to say that to patients.  I used to say things like that all the time to my patients but as a patient sometimes I’m not in the mood to hear something like that.  Most of the time I am because I laugh at myself a lot but sometimes I’m in a terrible mood and wouldn’t want to hear something like that in jest.  So gage your patient’s mood.  I think it’s probably a whole lot different in the orthopedic population because my patients always loved me and laughed when I would say things like that but you probably shouldn’t say that to a neuro patient who probably has a ton of mental issues.  Until you know them pretty well at least, maybe you can say something like that.

Categories: Recovery, Rehab, Stroke stuff

Tags: cerebellar stroke, patient rapport, speech therapy, Speech-language pathology, Stroke