Welcome to Week 1 in the Speech Therapy Makeover series! I’m challenging myself to “make over” some traditional therapy tasks so they will be more person-centered (functional, meaningful, and relevant for the people we work with). We know that person-centered care offers the best results across the board for outcomes, patient satisfaction, and efficiency of meeting goals.
Week 1 Speech Therapy Makeover Task: Naming animals in 1 minute (known in my world as verbal fluency)
The Challenge: Research has shown that the most efficient way to gain back language is to practice the language someone needs to use. We are most likely to make a difference in someone’s everyday life if we use/practice/demonstrate/model with the actual words the Person we treat wants and needs to use. For many people, naming animals may not be at the top of the goal list, so why not adjust this task to be person-centered?
Person-Centered Ideas: If your Person works at a zoo or drives a Safari bus, naming animals may be a great practice in speech therapy. For most people, naming animals is not related to a high-needs person-centered goal. What about personalizing this task according to what your Person wants/needs to talk about? Thinking about myself, I would want to practice naming spices, grocery ingredients, kitchen utensils, favorite recipes, etc., because cooking for my family is an important part of my daily life. For the person you work with, it will most likely be something unique to them! The sky is the limit with what specific verbal fluency task you can set as a goal with your Person–it’s all about what they want to say. In my sessions, we often work on names of loved ones as a lower-level goal (grandkids, kids, neighbors, etc.), but I’ve also had people heading back to work and we spend our time discussing machinery equipment parts or dog kennel commands or whatever it is that needs to be said. Consider broad categories to help you narrow down what fluency tasks you could practice:
*Family topics: Grandkids, Pets’ names, Vacation places, Friends or neighbors, Emotion words
*Hobby topics: Plants in the garden, Tools in the shed, Supplies/Equipment at work, Coworkers’ names, Favorite golf courses, Favorite movies, Professional hockey teams
*Home topics: Favorite recipes, Neighborhood streets or businesses, Cleaning products you buy, Rooms in the home/building, Phone apps, Local repair businesses, Things to do on a rainy day, Most watched TV shows or Netflix series
Setting Goals: Instead of writing a generic goal (“Verbal fluency will improve to 12 items/minute), I am working on writing more person-centered goals this year (“The patient will name 6 grandkids using naming strategies independently, compared to baseline of 3 at evaluation.” or “The patient will name 8 golf courses using communication notebook independently, compared to 0 at time of evaluation.”).
Thanks for reading! If you would like more person-centered therapy ideas, please check out the Home Sweet Home Series and the Back To Work Series. Be sure to follow on Facebook or Pinterest, or sign up for email updates to receive the series right in your inbox. If you have any ideas of speech therapy tasks you think need a “makeover”, email me at [email protected].
Great idea
I only use ‘animal naming’ for assessment for a semantic verbal fluency task vs a phonemic verbal fluency task (naming words that begin with a specific letter) then compare. I have also done similar tasks- name flowers in your garden or tools in your toolbox. Thank you Sarah- you have great ideas. Nannette
I’m in a transition phase between “workbook therapy” and person-centered care. I knew it would be hard for me so my initial in-between phase project was making a “functional WALC” for something to fall back on if a session completely broke down. Basically, I took the boring-old exercises we do and tried to make them more relevant to the patients I see in my SNF. The first thing I worked on was functional generative naming categories. I tried to think of a good hierarchy and some I use now are “items in this room,” then “other things you see in this facility” then “items in your [bedroom/kitchen/bathroom] at home.” If I want to add a level of abstraction, I might use something like “things people often lose” (could also potentially build safety awareness and insight). It’s a process but it’s getting easier. Thank you for this series!
Yes Julia! I love these ideas! And I have been where you are – it IS a process to switch over to person-centered care from the workbook approach – and I hope that my materials help make it a bit easier 🙂