Welcome

Eat, Speak, & Think is geared towards medical speech-language pathologists, but everyone is welcome.

Here you’ll find practical resources to help people who are living with swallowing, communication, or cognitive issues.

I started Eat, Speak, & Think in June 2018, and I tend to post a new article every other weekend. You can find a description of every post if you want to browse by topic. Or scroll down to see some of the most popular posts.

Eat (swallowing)

9 free swallow assessment tools. You’ll find rating scales and standardized tools for direct assessment.
10 factors that increase risk of aspiration pneumonia. Dysphagia (i.e., a swallowing impairment) does not lead directly to aspiration pneumonia. Other factors have to be present as well.
How to make pureed food taste good. It’s easy to learn the basics of pureeing, but how do you make it taste good? Learn all sorts of tips and tricks for pureeing meat, bread, vegetables, pasta, and more.
Take the guesswork out of thickening liquids with the IDDSI flow test. Turns out that no one (not even SLPs) can eyeball a beverage and judge how thick it is. Too thick can be just as harmful as too thin.

Speak (communication)

Improve aphasia outcomes by creating intensive home exercise programs. Very detailed advice from an ASHA Convention seminar. I also wrote about how it went with the first patient I tried it with.
My patient improved conversation with ARCS. Learn how I used Attentive Reading and Constrained Summarization to help my patient start initiating and carry on a conversation.
ALS guide for speech-language pathologists. Packed full of resources, including best practices, the role of exercise, assessment, and intervention. I’ve also written tutorials for message banking and voice banking, including the new Voice Keeper app.
The SLP’s quick guide to Bell’s palsy. Learn about Bell’s palsy and how we treat swallowing and communication difficulties.

Think (cognitive-communication)

Useful tools to help people with cognitive impairment. I share tools and products I use and recommend.
5 easy steps to remember names. I also share an example of how I use the strategies in my own life. I’ve also shared short term memory exercises and working memory exercises.
18 free assessment tools for cognition. Actually, there are many more! Just scroll down and check out the comments. You can identify specific goals by using this 2-page checklist.
How to use spaced retrieval with errorless learning to improve memory. I’ve written several posts about this highly useful teaching strategy, but this is the tutorial.
Treating cognition in the real world can be messy. Read about one such patient, and what I did.
10 practical cognitive therapy ideas. Each functional therapy target comes with sample SMART goals. My supervisor observed me when I was using the TED talk in therapy, and she was quite impressed with how enthusiastic my patient was.

Being an SLP

Get access to the Free Subscription Library

Nearly every post comes with a free download*. Sign up for my newsletter and get access to the Free Subscription Library, which has all the downloads in one place. I also email out any new downloads with the newsletter. The archives contain the 20 most recent newsletters.

Eat, Speak, & Think’s newsletter is sent out every other Monday, and contains:

A link to any new blog posts.
Any new downloads.
A couple of online resources I think are interesting or helpful.
A resource for people who want to create their own content.
And a personal word from me.

*Newer posts have a direct download. Even for the older posts, you don’t actually have to sign up to the newsletter to access the downloads. Just click on the link in the post and enter your information. You’ll get instant access in the web browser. Ignore the confirmation email, and you won’t be added to the list.

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Thank you for helping keep Eat, Speak, & Think sustainable!

Who am I?

I’m a speech-language pathologist with 13 years experience working in a variety of settings. You can learn more about me, but the highlights are that I love learning and sharing, I’m writing my first novel, and I love to hike and climb.

I’m writing this blog to help myself as much as I’m doing it to help you. After 13+ years, I’m swimming in notes from CEU courses and tons of other stuff I’ve collected over the years. I want to stay current and be organized enough to actually use what I’m learning, and writing this blog helps.

You’re welcome to share the content on this website for non-commercial, educational purposes as long as you give credit and do not modify any PDFs or other documents unless they are specifically designed to be modified. Contact me if you would like permission to use any content in another way. You can read more in the Terms and Conditions.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns! If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find out or at least point you in the right direction. I’m truly interested in your ideas, so please share!

Thank you for reading Eat, Speak, & Think!

Lisa A Young, MA, CCC-SLP
Speech-Language Pathologist

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