Welcome to Week 4 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 4 Speech Therapy Makeover Task: Using Taboo to Practice Conversations between a patient and conversation partner

The Challenge: Games and workbook activities can be overstructured, and improvement doesn’t always correlate to improving everyday life. At one point in my career, the game Taboo was a primary way I practiced conversation partner training (GULP!). Now I’ve learned, this isn’t exactly person-centered! As a younger clinician, I leaned on structured and non-relevant tasks — like Taboo — because I didn’t know about person-centered care. The problem is that Taboo is not really similar to real-life conversation! So, while practicing Taboo in therapy may result in better Taboo-playing and better Taboo-word retrieval, it is not going to be as efficient and practical as actually practicing the communication situations someone will need to use at home! I had missed the boat for using REAL conversations to model, practice, and discover strategies that could be used throughout the week!

A quick review on Conversation Partner Training: This simply means, we are working on training the person with aphasia and those they communicate with. We are thinking outside of success in the speech therapy room: Instead, we are focused on how communication is going during everyday life. In other words, we are focused on activity and participation, which is consistent with the WHO-ICF and Life Participation Approach for Aphasia.

Person-Centered Thinking: What does your person with aphasia want to be able to communicate? Grocery list items, a news story, a phone message, errands to run, a sports score, something he saw out the window? Let’s start with the scenarios that matter to each person whenever possible, because improving that will actually improve something in everyday life.

For persons with aphasia, quality practice with training communication partners is vital for person-centered care and the wellbeing of those with aphasia. THIS ISN’T SOMETHING WE TAG ON FOR THE LAST 10 MINUTES OF THERAPY! By training their communication partners, we are giving the person with aphasia the best chance of an outcome that will improve everyday communication and interactions.

Instead of simply demonstrating and hoping others observing will also be able to implement the knowledge and techniques for communicating with a person with aphasia, we should turn to evidence-based techniques and in-context practice to give us the best chance of successful communication between a patient and their communication partners. See my Conversation Partner Training Packet if you need ideas!

But Taboo Is Easy To Score…. And Real Life Isn’t! We have tools and CAN measure meaningful factors to account for real life participation! Here are some sample goals that I use– notice that they relate to a real life goal:

*Using Conversational Coaching intervention, the patient and communication partner will demonstrate ability to send and receive messages with 70% acc for single words to communicate errand needs for week.

*Using Conversational Coaching intervention, the patient and her spouse will demonstrate ability to successfully communicate 3 key facts over phone calls on 80% of attempts.

Check out the Conversation Partner Training packet if you want evidence-based techniques and reusable printables in your toolbox!

Thanks for reading! If you would like more person-centered therapy ideas, please check out my Shop. Be sure to follow on Facebook , Pinterest, Instagram 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].