Speech-Language Pathologist for Hire!

Hello, friends! As promised, here is a post about what exactly my job is!

The past couple of days have been a bit hectic for personal reasons. Additionally, my computer has had a few problems. Fortunately, all of that has now been dealt with, and I can post again! The fall out is that I'm writing this post pretty late and it will therefore be a bit abbreviated.

A Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) is a person certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) to diagnose and treat disorders falling into those categories.

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Most people call us speech therapists. That's not an inaccurate term, but it's a little limited. "Speech therapist" typically conjures up the idea that all we do is fix lisps or, "Oh, so you fix kids who stutter?" Again, true, but limited. SLPs can treat people with lisps, stutters (which is a whole lot more complicated that most people realize but that's another post), speech sound disorders, phonological disorders, expressive or receptive language disorders, reading disorders, spelling disorders, writing disorders, pragmatic disorders, respiratory disorders, memory problems, executive function problems, attention disorders, and other cognitive problems, not to mention aural rehabilitation. So yeah, we do a bunch of stuff.

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We also work in bunch of different settings for the same reason.

For that reason (similar to doctors) SLPs often tend to specialize in a few areas, but we are legally required to know about all of them. A Masters degree is required, and we take courses in each of these areas, as well as completing hours of direct patient contact time related to most disorders. Finally, we also take comprehensive exams covering all these areas (for my program, this was 6 timed essays) AND another multiple choice test in order to be licensed to work in schools. After graduation, we must keep up with 30 continuing education hours each three years (10/year) and our first year of employment functions like a paid internship in which we must be overseen by another SLP with at least 3 years of experience (excluding their own internship) before we are fully certified and licensed. This first year is know as a clinical fellowship, or CF.

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We can help!

Alright guys, that's all I've got for now. For more information, check out the website for our certifying organization, ASHA. If you have any questions for me about more specific info, ask in the comments or on the Facebook page!

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