Speech & Language Therapists - what do your days look like?

[w0rkschmurk]

Hi! Are there any speech & language therapists on here who would be willing to share what a typical day (if such a thing exists) at work looks like for you?

I'm considering SLT as a career and have not been able to meet with any SLTs, even those in independent practice.

I've got a relevant background, done lots of reading on the career and about people they've helped, attended webinars etc but I really want some day-to-day insight!

I know it's a broad discipline, so I'm interested in hearing from anyone in the field, whether working in paediatric or adult services.

Thanks for your help!

😊

Goodness me, I don't know how to answer that so nearly scrolled past!

Short answer would be for me there is no typical day. I work in community services within paediatrics so in theory any child or young person 0-18 with communication difficulties could come onto my caseload.

My days are a mix of school visits, nursery visits, home visits, clinic appointments, meetings (often virtual these days), discussions with colleagues, quick googling for medical terms I don't know in paediatrician reports, discussions with others about how best to meet a child's needs, training parents and staff that work with the child and also lots of boring admin and emails.

Other than the direct clinical stuff, we do lots of universal (population level) stuff too like our facebook page and website, thinking about developing training to groups like nursery staff/health visitors/students/police etc. We also do things like man the helpline where anybody can call with a query about a child.

Caseload is a mix of early communication, little ones who just haven't started talking for unknown reasons, language difficulties, social communication and ASD/neurodevelopmental, speech sounds, brain injury, voice and everything in between or a mix! Some of my colleagues also work in the specialist area of swallowing difficulties, and some of us are directly involved in formal neurodevelopmental diagnosing.
Sometimes we do direct therapy, but often strategies to adults around the child is more effective.

It's a job I mostly really enjoy. There are lots of areas you can specialise in, you have a lot of autonomy and get to work with some utterly awesome kiddies and young people. It can also be stressful trying to explain to parents that we won't "fix" their child no matter how much therapy they get, or to teachers that little Johnny may not benefit from our service right now despite having X difficulty.
The paperwork side of things is also crap.

I'd say go for it and join the madness!

(In case it's relevant I'm in Scotland)

I'm a band 7 dysphagia lead SLT with a mixed role of acute inpatients, specialist hospital clinics, videofluoroscopy (I lead on swallowing x rays) and FEES (We use an endoscopy to assess swallowing) plus management.

A typical hospital day would be get in at 8, triage new referrals from the wards and sort the caseload ready for the day. Huddle with the acute SLTs and split up the work. I might go anywhere in the hospital from A&E to discharge lounge and assess people with all sorts of swallowing difficulties. Management can be NBM and a feeding tube, rehab all the way to risk feeding and palliative management.

It's a joy getting people eating and drinking again and out of hospital. I really love doing complex diagnostic work and figuring out what the cause is which patients are desperate for - we are often the first to spot MND and laryngeal cancers. I also love ICU and working with tracheostomy and getting people using their own airway again.

I have to talk to doctors and nurses, call family members, write clinical notes, do best interest meetings, do discharge paperwork etc. Over lunch we have a huddle again, review the cases, see what's still a priority and do the same in the afternoon. Plenty of admin jobs too.

For a non inpatient day my days are slower. I book appointments and see less patients because they take longer and are more complex. I have more desk time analysing images, writing reports, telephone reviewing patients, doing service development work, line management, CPD, organising training for staff, supervising junior staff, recruitment etc.

I love my job. I worked really hard over the last 20 years to get here and I know I'm really good at it. SLT can be a really great and rewarding career with loads of variety and scope for development with good pay progression too. Good luck!

I work in a residential school for traumatised children. A typical day for me might be:

Assessing the children's communication development through individual sessions or observation in class.
Running activities in class alongside teachers/TAs to promote children's language and communication skills.
Attending meetings with other members of the team to track children's progress.
Carrying out a training session for a range of different professionals.

SALT is a great job. There's so many different areas to specialise in.

Hmm a typical day, I work with paediatric dysphagia in community so it varies. I do very little work on communication.

Clinic day: 1 hour appointments usually back to back in outpatients department. Child walks in problem with feeding, observe, assess then hopefully have done kind of recommendation. Try to type notes while they in room then next child turn. End of clinic finalise notes, write clinic letters or reports and save for admin to post.

Admin days: catch up on all the reports and letters that I didn't manage to finish in clinic days, meetings (mostly online now) around children eg. team around child, discharge planning, EHCP, child protection. Supervision both for me with clinical team and for junior therapists I supervise.

school visits (rare since COVID) and home visits if child can't been seen in clinic on occasion.

I do no universal level work. Done targeted egg. Online webinars for children who have feeding problems that don't meet criteria for face to face clinics.

There is a huge variation in the field. Some SLTs working in prisons/youth offending, CAMHS/mental health services asc well as hospitals, care home and schools.

Thank you all so much - this is so fascinating!

All of your roles sound so varied yet require specific expertise - just what I'm after (currently I have a desk job & I can't take any more of it).

If any other SLTs would also like to share, I'd love to hear what your days look like too. I will be bookmarking this page for future reference!

Maybe check out the #mysltday on Twitter for other examples of things people do, can help show how varied role is

Ps. My last post was supposed to say "some targeted eg" but my autocorrect took over!

@littleducks excellent, I will, thank you!

@EchidnaKidney I'm curious about working in community locations - how many different places would you ordinarily visit in a day? Are you able to set your own schedule in this respect? I know this may vary by board/site. (I'm in Scotland too)