On my recent neurology placement I had a number of patients that had expressive aphasia. At first it was very difficult to communicate with these patients and both the patients and I felt frustrated at times. It was difficult to remember to ask simple yes or no questions, let alone have the patient express what they were feeling to me.
It hit home to me how frustrating it must be for a person to be aware of what they want to tell you, but not have the capacity to do so. It made me very appreciated about the simple blessing of language!
I found that the patients with aphasia responded well when I chatted to them like any other patient. As long as I remembered to ask them yes or no questions we were able to communicate in at least a satisfactory way.
By the end of my placement I felt closest to some of my patients with expressive aphasia and felt that I was much more in tune with how they were feeling, without relying on words. Once I had discovered an appropriate way to communicate with them I felt that they really enjoyed our sessions together and I got a lot out of them too!
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ReplyDeleteI haven't had a lot of experience with patients with expressive aphasia but I've definitely seen at least one. It must be so frustrating for these patients and I don't think we can really comprehend the difficulty they go through just to communicate. When I was with this pt with expressive aphasia, I spent a lot of time simply trying to get to know the pt as best as I could using yes/no questions and doing lots of pointing to pictures and words. It seemed to help the patient get comfortable with me and it seemed to be an effective way of building a good rapport with this pt who had lots of difficulty communicating. Well done for putting in the effort to make the patients comfortable with you as a therapist - it probably made your treatment a lot more effective afterward.
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