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Writing this text, having now spent considerable time over several months in the Speech and Language Department of Addenbrooke's Hospital, I realise I am attempting to do the one thing my work is researching - communicate. My time within the hospital has been divided between talking to the speech therapists and spending time with them in the course of their working day. This has included observing patient consultations, several tests and/or treatments and discussion periods during which my observations and questions were patiently considered and answered by staff. A number of key observations have come out of these encounters, starting points for workshops that will take place during the late summer of 2004 and for the work that I shall make as a result of the entire experience. |
I admit to feeling somewhat nervous and apprehensive during the first few visits to the hospital but the therapists, who were more than generous with their time, soon allayed this. It is clear that on the Lewin ward, where patients who need rehabilitation after stroke or head injury are cared for, there is an ongoing concern that patients are stimulated as often as is feasible given their condition. They can spend up to six months on this ward before moving on and have usually spent time on an acute ward before they arrive. Thus a routine establishes itself. Speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, doctors, nurses and other care staff all work together to form an embracing arm of care for the patient. To the observer, support and treatment systems establish themselves unseen. Timetables are pinned behind each patient's bed, colour coded to indicate different procedures forming a visual guide to the days ahead. Deliberately using colour on these notices is the first indication I have of the many ways in which the communication links exist in this environment. The adoption of all the senses in the quest for the successful exchange of information is a prerequisite here, as is the multi faceted ways in which the staff establish new pathways for information. Aphasia, the term used to describe the partial or total inability to produce and understand speech as a result of brain damage caused by injury or disease, is a word constructed partly of the term 'phase'. Ironically one dictionary definition of the word phase is as follows - a clearly distinguishable period or stage in a process, in the development of something or in a sequence of events. A second definition follows - any period of time when a situation or particular pattern of behaviour persists and is often annoying or worrying. The patients that I have met have, for the most part, been remarkably tolerant of their situation, appearing to accept and set to the task of re educating their minds to cope with the new condition. And the orchestrator of this re-education is the speech therapist. * Quote from a female patient on trying to express her thoughts verbally |
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