Sophie, a speech and language therapist at CUH, tells us her CUH story.
Video: Sophie talks about her role at CUH
Link: https://youtu.be/se5Y9wQ1pN0
Speech and language therapists work with patients across the age ranges, so right from birth all the way up until old age, and we work with people who have speech, language and communication needs but also eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties.
Those problems can be present from birth, or they can be they can emerge as a child develops and grows. They can be a result of an acute event or part of a long-term chronic condition.
I work mainly on the neonatal unit at CUH, with premature and sick babies. I also work across the paediatric wards as well.
Everyone I know who's a speech and language therapist just love their job and there's so many opportunities to specialise in lots of different areas.
I studied linguistics for my undergraduate degree at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, I then moved to London to study for my master's degree in speech and language therapy. I started working with pre-school children with complex needs in Hackney and then I moved into the neonatal unit at the Homerton hospital and at the Royal London hospital before moving to Cambridge and starting to work at CUH.
I think in some ways my days are quite unpredictable, first thing in the morning we'll have a look at the caseload see if any new referrals have come in and have a chat amongst the team about who's going to see which patients.
I'll plan my day, often that's around when the children will be having their lunch or when the babies’ feeds are due. It's a mixture of seeing patients who I’ve seen in the preceding days and then picking up new referrals as well. So, I never quite know what's going to happen each day and then of course, seeing patients is interspersed with various meetings that I have to attend and liaising with other members of the multidisciplinary team to talk about patients, and plan what we're going to do next with them.
I really love the fact that it's such a big hospital and there are so many different professionals here from all different specialities, it's such a great opportunity to learn about what other people do, to work together and to provide real holistic care for children and their families.
I really love the fact that it's such a big hospital and there are so many different professionals here from all different specialities, it's such a great opportunity to learn about what other people do, to work together and to provide true holistic care for children and their families. We make sure we're doing everything we can, to help them meet their potential and to get them home.
Video fluoroscopy is a bit like a video x-ray of somebody's swallow, we have really limited time in the video fluoroscopy suite and we only have four appointments a month for the children.
It can be really daunting for children to come into a place that they don't know and there's lots of people watching from behind a screen. We ask them to eat and drink while we're watching them, we add barium to the food and drink, so it shows up on the x-ray, that makes their food and drink taste a bit funny. We really want to do everything we can to help them feel relaxed about what's going to happen at the appointment, who's going to be there, what we're going to ask them to do and so on.
We need to get the best pictures that we possibly can, to help us give them advice about supporting safe swallowing. To help with this I developed a video to try and help children understand the process of coming into hospital for video fluoroscopy.
We need to get the best pictures that we possibly can, to help us give them advice about supporting safe swallowing. So I developed a video to try and help children understand the process of coming into hospital for video fluoroscopy.
During lockdown I was looking for a project to work on with my children, to give them something to do and to learn a new skill. We downloaded a stop frame animation app onto my phone and recorded my children's voices using a script that I’d written.
Then we used little Playmobil figures to make it relevant to the children and normalise it for them. By recording children's voices, it wasn't patronising and we made sure we used words and language that young children can easily understand. Providing information visually has helped children to know what their video fluoroscopy appointment will involve and makes it less scarey.
I asked the children and young people's patient user group, Active! to have a look at it for me to see what they thought about it, and they were really positive. They thought it was a really helpful resource for children who'd be coming in for video fluoroscopy.
We've managed to have the film translated into a few different languages so that it's more accessible.
Sophie's animation about coming to the hospital for a videofluoroscopy
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZvVsf2mRZo&ab_channel=CUHNHS
I think speech and language therapy is such an incredible career here at CUH, you get to meet so many people, you learn so much.
Everyone I know who's a speech and language therapist just loves their job and there are so many opportunities to specialise in lots of different areas. You can go into research, you can move into teaching if you want to, you can really personalise your career according to what your interests are and what you want to do next. So, it never gets boring, and I love it.