A Day in the Life of an Outpatient Pediatric SLP
Writing a "Day in the Life of..." blog post always begs the question of which day to pick. Do I pick the day where I had 6 patients show up or the day where I had 14 regulars plus new patient evaluations?
The outpatient pediatric setting can vary significantly from day to day and season to season. I get more referrals for new evaluations when schools are on break and I have lighter mornings with more evening appointments during the school year.
The age of my patients varies from 18 months to 18 years with a diversity of diagnoses and presentations, so I've chosen a day that has a splattering of almost everything I see regularly.
7:50am
Arrive to work just ahead of the scheduled 8am patient, grab my laptop from the storage closet, and get set.
8:00am
My 1-hour preschool-aged stuttering/articulation patient has canceled so I have a little time to read, organizer, or review the rest of today's schedule.
9:30am
30-minute play-based language therapy with a toddler. (I'm lucky and have so many toys for children to choose form).
10:00am
1-hour new patient evaluation for a 3 year old. The concern was listed as expressive language on initial paperwork, but in meeting the child, I see articulation and intelligibility issues which will need to be assessed as well. (Typically, it's the other way around and the paperwork lists a speech problem but the true concern is with language). At the end of the session, send a staff message to the pediatrician with my results from the evaluation. (I love that I can message the doctors directly and get a quick reply using Electronic Medical Records).
11:00am
1-hour voice evaluation for a school aged child referred from the otolaryngologist after an endoscopic exam identified vocal fold nodules. I love voice, but don't get to do it very often so I'm excited to work on this one. (Luckily, I have lots of tools for evaluations as well).
12:00pm
I should be seeing siblings for back-to-back/joint articulation and language sessions with a pre-schooler and a kindergartener, but the family is running late and I will only have time to see one of them today. 1:00pm LUNCH TIME - I get a full hour and there are restaurants around so I usually go out for lunch alone to enjoy a little quiet and solitude or listen to NPR on my car radio. 2:00pm Time for articulation therapy with a kindergartner.
2:30pm
Back to language therapy with a toddler, but this one is bilingual and I'm not. Fortunately parent is bilingual too.
3:00pm
Speech and language therapy with a 1st grader.
3:30pm
Back to play-based therapy with a little one who is under 2 years old.
3:55pm
Sending a quick note to the Occupational Therapist regarding our co-treat session for later in the week with a child with Autism who is using a combination of PECS and sign language.
4:00pm
Working on articulation and language in the same session with a pre-school aged child.
4:30pm
Table based tasks for this early elementary child with grammar difficulties.
5:00pm
Teenager with Down Syndrome & Autism learning to improve communication with an AAC device.
5:30pm
Preschooler working on difficulty with motor planning for speech and sound sequencing.
6:00pm
Upper elementary student here to work on a frontal lisp.
6:30pm
Teen with high-functioning Autism here to work on fluency of speech and social interaction.
7:00pm
Time to close up shop. I tried to type most session notes immediately after each session before going to the waiting room to get the next patients, but when they are back to back I get a little behind. I just need to finish typing the last few and lock up the clinic.
I didn't get to work on any /r/ sounds today...and I'm the weird SLP who loves /r/! ❤️
It's a long day. I will get home about 12 hours after I left, but I'm not too tired. I get 3-day weekends every week, so the long days are well worth it for me. 😁
Also, I LOVE my office! (The muted color scheme is less visually overwhelming for some children, but I still have lots of colorful toys we can bring out from the toy cabinet). Check out a 360 degree view of my office (and a bonus closet) in the video below.
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