Episode #92: Transforming Person-Centered Care Through LPAA Knowledge: A Conversation with Melinda Corwin and Brooke Hallowell

Aphasia Access Conversations

Interviewer info

Lyssa Rome is a speech-language pathologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, where she facilitates groups. She owns an LPAA-focused private practice and specializes in working with people with aphasia, dysarthria, and other neurogenic communication impairments. She has worked in acute hospital, skilled nursing, and continuum of care settings. Prior to becoming an SLP, Lyssa was a public radio journalist, editor, and podcast producer.

Guest bios

Melinda Corwin is a university distinguished professor and clinical supervisor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, where she has worked since 1994. Prior to her university position, she worked as a hospital speech-language pathologist. She directs the Stroke & Aphasia Recovery (STAR) Program, a community outreach program in Lubbock, Texas, for persons with aphasia and their families.

Brooke Hallowell is professor and dean of health sciences at Springfield College. Brooke is a specialist in neurogenic communication disorders, and has been working clinically, teaching future clinicians, and engaging in research on aphasia for 25 years. She is known for transnational research collaboration, academic and clinical program development, and global health programming in underserved regions of the world. A pioneer in using eyetracking and pupillometry to study cognition and language in adults, she holds patents on associated technology. Professor Hallowell is the author of Aphasia and Other Acquired Neurogenic Language Disorders: A Guide for Clinical Excellence.

Listener Take-aways

In today’s episode you will:

• Identify key differences between clinician-centered care and person-centered care.
• Understand gaps in current training regarding the Life Participation Approach.
• Learn about the Aphasia Access knowledge course.

Edited show notes

Lyssa Rome

Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Lyssa Rome. I'm a speech language pathologist on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, and I see clients with aphasia and other neurogenic communication impairments in my LPAA focused private practice. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources.

I'm pleased to be joining the podcast as today's host for an episode that will feature Melinda Corwin and Brooke Halliwell. We’ll be discussing Aphasia Access’s new online project, Person-Centered Care: The Life Participation Approach to Aphasia Knowledge Course, which debuts this month, I had the pleasure of playing a small role in this project as the narrator for the course.

Melinda Corwin is a University Distinguished Professor and clinical supervisor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, where she has worked since 1994. Prior to her university position, she worked as a hospital speech language pathologist. She directs the Stroke and Aphasia Recovery, or STAR, program, a community outreach program in Lubbock, Texas, for persons with aphasia and their families.

Brooke Hallowell is a professor and dean of health sciences at Springfield College. Brooke is a specialist in neurogenic communication disorders and has been working clinically, teaching future clinicians, and engaging in research on aphasia for 25 years. She is known for transnational research collaboration, academic and clinical program development, and global health programming in underserved regions of the world. A pioneer in using eye tracking and pupillometry to study cognition and language and adults, she holds patents on associated Technology. Professor Halliwell is the author of Aphasia and Other Acquired Neurogenic Language Disorders: A Guide for Clinical Excellence, Second Edition.

Thank you for joining me. I wanted to start with an “aha moment,” anything that stands out for you in terms of the Life Participation Approach. Who would like to start?

Melinda Corwin

So, at our university, I got to meet a man who was in his 60s, he had survived a stroke two years prior, he was single and living in a long term care facility. He didn't have any family locally. He came to our university community outreach program for people with aphasia. And after about six months of being with us, he confided to his student clinician one day that he wondered if he could work out a payment plan to pay for throat surgery to fix his problems with speech and communication. And we realized that he did not understand the nature of aphasia. He actually thought there was a surgery available to fix or cure it, and that because he was low income, he didn't have the money to afford it.

That was my aha moment, where I realized that we had failed him, our system had failed him. This man deserved to have access to his health information regarding his diagnosis, his condition, his prognosis, and he didn't get that as part of his ability to participate in his life and in his health care plan. And I knew we could do better. And so I found colleagues and friends through Aphasia Access, and I'm really hoping and working towards a systemic change for that reason.

Lyssa Rome

Thank you. Brooke, what about you?

Brooke Hallowell

Well, I continue to have aha moments. For for me, one that stands out relates to my role as an educator and a person who teaches courses in aphasia and author to support learning and future clinicians who will be working with people who have aphasia. It was hard for many of us who were raised with a focus on medical and impairment-based, deficit-focused models of aphasia, to integrate our appreciation for foci on life participation with how we were taught, and may have previously taught and mentored our students. It's as if, for many of us, the recognition of how essential it is for us to embrace life participation was there long before we had a good grasp on how to integrate life participation holistically into our educational content. We wanted to make sure our students knew about medical, neuroscientific, neuropsychological, psycholinguistic, etc., aspects of aphasia, and we wanted to make sure they knew about the theoretical underpinnings of aphasia-related content. So if you think about what we can cover in a course, in our limited time with future clinicians, we felt and still do just never have sufficient time to delve into some of the really critical life participation content.

So for me it kind of aha moment. Although I gotta say it wasn't. So sudden as a flash at a single moment in time, maybe an aha phase. It relates to the importance of helping current and future clinicians embrace that we all need to be able to hold several conceptual frameworks about aphasia in our minds at the same time, and that by understanding and appreciating multiple perspectives, we didn't have to necessarily choose one over the other. We didn't have to argue about which models were better than others, or whether working on impairment level deficits was somehow not essential to life participation. Once that realization was clear within me, I found that it was easier to integrate life participation and the ICF framework through our all of our discussions and teaching about aphasia and other disorders as well.

Many of us invested in life participation approaches have supported one another in that sort of integration of multiple frameworks in our thinking, and in our work. Aphasia Access has been a powerful force in that regard. The mutual support to hold life participation paramount, no matter what are other theoretical perspectives, and medical or non-medical orientations.

Lyssa Rome

Thank you. I think that leads really nicely, actually, into this topic of the knowledge course that that Aphasia Access has developed and that's debuting this month. So can you tell us a little bit more about the project and how it began?

Melinda Corwin

The project began with the plight of both people with aphasia and speech language pathologist. Of course, SLPs know that people with aphasia want to participate in life, which means their current life as a patient, or in their life when they go back home and their life years into the future. The plight for speech language pathologists is that they face enormous time limitations, insurance reimbursement constraints, they have increased workload across all the different healthcare systems and settings. And so providing true person-centered care, health equity, and personalized goals for each person that we serve can feel almost impossible.

This challenge was so pervasive that it appeared in a comprehensive report written by Nina Simmons-Mackie in 2018, called Aphasia in North America, and it's available from Aphasia Access. In her report, she listed the gap areas and so we really wanted to focus on gap area number five, which is related to insufficient attention to life participation across the continuum of care. And also gap area number six, which is related to insufficient training and protocols or guidelines to aid speech language pathologists and other health care professionals in the implementation of this participation-oriented intervention across the continuum of care.

So the year that her report came out a team of aphasia clinicians, researchers, and program providers mobilized to invent a product to concretely try to address these gap areas. We wanted to offer busy clinicians and healthcare professionals training that they wouldn't have to travel to, and something that was more than a webinar. We did a lot of research to produce the learning experience, and we tried to provide the most contemporary, interactive learning methods for adults. Our beta testers have said that they have found the course to be different and highly valuable.

Lyssa Rome

So I think obviously, there's this big need. And I'm wondering, Brooke, maybe if you could speak a little bit more to how this person-centered care approach can support the goals of increasing life participation, and maybe differentiate a little bit between clinician-centered care and person-centered care for people with aphasia?

Brooke Hallowell

Sure. In clinician-centered care, the clinician is really in charge of all aspects of intervention. The clinician is the boss. The clinician decides what will be assessed and how it will be assessed. The clinician interprets the assessment results. And from that, sets goals for the person with aphasia. And the clinician decides on the treatment methods that will be used to reach those goals. And that's very different from person-centered care, where the person and the clinician are collaborators from the start, they work together to determine priorities for what that person really wants to be able to do in life and how communication affects what a person wants to do.

In person-centered care, the person's priorities are really the primary focus of assessment and goal setting and every aspect of intervention. And the person and the clinician set goals collaboratively, often including other people that are important in that person's life. And together, they collaborate in selecting what goals will get prioritized, and what the context is for working on those goals that's most relevant to the person.

So the person's priorities are at the heart of our work in person-centered care. We clinicians collaborate with the person, and those people who are important to the person, at every stage of goal setting, assessment, treatment planning, etc.

Lyssa Rome

So thinking about person-centered care, I'm wondering if you can describe a little bit more about the goals of this knowledge course and how they relate to person-centered care.

Brooke Hallowell

Sure, the overarching goal is to provide learners with foundational, verifiable knowledge that's critical for providing person-centered care. Person-centered care is a universal and global need for people who have aphasia, and those who are important in their lives. The Life Participation Approach is fundamental to this wish that clinicians worldwide have for people with aphasia. That's increased participation in life regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, national origin, geographic location, religious or other beliefs—regardless of any individual differences.

This course is the first in a series. The knowledge course consists of eight online, self-paced interactive modules, each of which contains three specific learning objectives. The knowledge course is a standardized way that clinicians—from novices to experienced clinicians—can be formally recognized as a Life Participation Approach professional. When a person successfully completes the course, they earn an eBadge, a certificate, and an optional 2.5 continuing education credits for those who are members of the American Speech Language Hearing Association.

Next year, Aphasia Access will release the second in the series: the practice course. That course will build on the fundamentals of the knowledge course, passing that course will lead to the award of a second badge focused on implementation strategies across care settings. Every course module is designed to provide practical suggestions, graphics, dynamic video clips, and interactive and reflective activities to help key concepts come alive.

Lyssa Rome

Tell us a little bit more about the content team. Who worked on this badge project?

Melinda Corwin

This is Melinda and it's been an honor to serve as the content team manager for the project. For the knowledge course we had eight members on our team. Our lead author is Nina Simmons-Mackie, who's a professor emeritus at Southeastern Louisiana University. Of course, Brooke Hallowell, who as you said, is professor and dean of health sciences at Springfield College. Brooke also secured a grant to help with funding portions of this project and we could not have done it without her.

And our other team members include Katarina Haley, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she directs the UNC Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders. Mary Hildebrand is a recently retired associate professor and program director of the occupational therapy department at Massachusetts General Hospital or MGH Institute of Health Professions. Jacqueline Laures-Gore is an associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at Georgia State University. We have Marjorie Nicholas, who's the chair of the communication sciences and disorders department at MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. And last but not least, our project manager Kathryn Shelley. She is co-founder and current grants director of the Aphasia Center of West Texas, and she's also a former president of Aphasia Access, and this course would not be possible without Kathryn’s guidance.

Lyssa Rome

Tell us a little bit more about what the benefits are of having this eBadge or taking this course.

Brooke Hallowell

Sure, this is Brooke. The badge is going to convey to others that the participant has a firm foundation of person-centered care, which is, as we know, at the heart of the life participation approach. So benefits include delivering equitable, person-centered care through collaborative goal setting and intervention, improving success for people with aphasia, and those who care about them and helping specific care settings meet communication access mandates.

When an eBadge is displayed in an email signature, or on social media, there'll be a clickable link. And that will help employers, or colleagues, or the people that we serve, even friends and family, link to a full description of what it means to have earned that eBadge.

Lyssa Rome

Great. Many of the professionals who are involved in Aphasia Access are experts in the life participation approach. So why would they want to take this course to document their knowledge?

Melinda Corwin

This is Melinda. Well, by devoting personal time, energy, and resources to earn an eBadge, it’s an efficient way to let others know that we share a common goal to provide patient-centered care across the continuum of care. And regardless of what setting a particular professional is in, whether they're in an acute care hospital, inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient rehab, home health, or community-level aphasia program, or group, these eBadge holders will be able to identify each other.

I'm a university professor and director of an aphasia community outreach program. I've been trying to teach and use the Life Participation Approach for several years, and I've wanted to spread the word with other speech language pathologists. So by adding this symbol to my email signature, I hope that colleagues will click on the eBadge and see what I've been up to.

My decision to display the eBadge is my way to help make system change possible, I envision a day in which all healthcare providers will aspire to provide patient-centered care, essentially from the ambulance ride to the emergency center, all the way to the person's return to home and community.

Lyssa Rome

The benefits of this seem really clear. But will this eBadge or certificate be required for a clinician to to employ a person-centered or life participation approach to aphasia? Brooke?

Brooke Hallowell

Oh, no, definitely not. I have to chime in on that. We know that many clinicians are deeply engaged in this approach. And many have adhered to this approach for years and in ways that may not have been labeled expressly as life participation approach. Still, based on gaps that we know exists in our current healthcare and community settings, we hope that the eBadge will really help clinicians showcase their knowledge to employers and peers and the people they serve. Engaging in the course itself can provide support for students and clinicians who want to consider life participation constructs, perhaps more deeply or in new ways. And as Melinda was just intimating, it's also a means of confirming shared values about life participation amongst us.

Lyssa Rome

So when people have completed this course, how is that displayed as an eBadge? Melinda, maybe you can take that one?

Melinda Corwin

Yes. So it'll be in the person's email signature line, if they choose to place it there. And the eBadge is from a company called Credly, which enables anyone to click on the badge icon and be taken to a website that explains exactly what training the person completed to earn that eBadge.

Brooke Hallowell

Yeah, and it's so easy to register for the course, just go to the Aphasia Access website. That's www.aphasiaaccess.org. From there, you'll see the link to the knowledge course on the homepage. And that will take you to our new Aphasia Access Academy, which is the new home for all of our educational experiences. There is a cost. The cost for Aphasia Access members is $129. And for non-members, it's $179.

And if you're not already an Aphasia Access member, your enrollment in the course includes a one year, first-time membership. So it's really a wonderful way to experience so many benefits of our Aphasia Access membership and network. We have our Brag and Steal events, the distinguished lecture series, shared free resources, there's a discount registration for the Leadership Summit, and there are also on-demand pre-recorded webinars. So all of that comes along with that membership.

Lyssa Rome

Well, I'm really excited about this course. And I appreciate your sharing more details about it. And I'm wondering if there are any last thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Brooke Hallowell

Yeah, this is Brooke, I would just I've been reflecting as we've had this conversation today about how amazing it was to work with this collaborative team in developing the course. You know, I think all of us who have been involved in this from the beginning felt like we were already expert in the life participation approach. There isn't that much more to learn. But in fact, there was a tremendous amount of dynamic discussion, argumentation, passionate discussion about the various aspects of the life participation and how to portray it, how to talk about it, and what terms to use and not use. So I feel like I grew tremendously from the process of the course development. And I think a lot of that, I certainly hope that a lot of that comes out to people who participate in the course. So even if you think you're already expert in it, I'd still recommend that you give it a try for all the reasons that we talked about, and including that there's always more for all of us to learn about this approach.

Lyssa Rome

So true. Brooke Hallowell and Melinda Corwin, thank you for being our guests on this podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access and to access our growing library of materials, go to www.aphasiaaccess.org. For a more user-friendly experience, members can sign up for the Aphasia Access Academy, which is free and provides resources searchable by topic or author. If you have an idea for a future podcast series topic, email us at [e-mail]. Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access.

References and Resources

http://www.aphasiaaccessacademy.org/

www.AphasiaAccess.org/knowledgebadge/