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What
is a speech pathologist?
A
speech pathologist is a health care professional educated and trained
to evaluate and treat people with speech, language and swallowing
problems. Speech pathologists hold either a master's or doctorate
degree and have earned a certification of clinical competence from
the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
What services do speech pathologists provide?
Speech pathologists provide a variety of services aimed at helping
people develop good communication skills and improve their ability
to swallow.
These
include:
-
Assisting people who have trouble swallowing as a result of illness,
surgery, stroke or injury.
- Helping
people with aphasia to relearn speech and language skills.
- Assisting
clients who have tracheotomies or are ventilator-dependent with
oral communication.
- Helping
people with articulation disorders learn proper production of
speech sounds.
- Advising
individuals and the community on ways to live with speech and
language disorders.
- Enhancing
communication abilities by improving skills, such as pitch, projection,
accent and nonverbal communication.
- Assisting
people with voice disorders.
- Evaluating,
selecting and developing communication systems (such as voice-synthesizing
computers and communication boards) for people with severe speech
problems.
- Helping
people who stutter to speak more fluently.
- Conducting
research to develop new and better ways to evaluate and treat
speech, language and swallowing problems.
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