Soft skills are critically important for delivering person-centered care in speech therapy. Strengthening our soft skills would likely improve patient outcomes and satisfaction, as well as make it easier to navigate challenging situations. I don’t just mean handling tricky conversations, but also pinning down meaningful goals! This article will focus on person-centered assessment and intervention. I recently took a wonderful continuing education course from Lauren Schwabish, MS, CCC-SLP, and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned.
Free DIRECT download: What to say during an initial evaluation (cheat sheet). (Email subscribers get free access to all the resources in the Free Subscription Library.)
Outline:
- Your pain points at work.
- What are soft skills?
- Lauren’s course on soft skills for therapists.
- Why goal-setting is so challenging.
- Hard skills: The “what” of person-centered care.
- Soft skills: The “how” of person-centered care.
- What to say to your patients.
- A few of Lauren’s tools.
- Learn more about soft skills for SLPs.
- Related Eat, Speak, & Think posts.
- Key references.
Your pain points at work
Take a moment to think about your pain points at work. If you had a magic wand and could wish away three challenges, would would they be?
I have had 799 responses to the survey I send to people who sign up for my newsletter. SLPs make up 72% of the respondents, with OTs and other health professionals making up another 8%. The remaining 20% are SLP students, retired professionals, other professionals (such as group home employees), and people living with the conditions we treat.
An informal scan of those 799 responses shows the following frequently-requested topics for the blog.
- Treating adults with cognitive impairments.
- Functional treatment ideas.
- How to make my therapy more effective.
- Patient-centered goal setting.
Do any of those pain points sound familiar to you? They do to me!
I believe the root problem of all of these problems is that we don’t have the training and practice we need in using the soft skills necessary to be effective in applying our knowledge.
While we learn the mechanics of WHAT to do in grad school and continuing education, we don’t necessarily learn HOW to apply what we know. Soft skills are at the root of learning how to be effective therapists.
What are soft skills?
According to Workable, soft skills are:
General traits not specific to any job, helping employees excel in any workplace. They include communication, teamwork, and adaptability, often termed transferable or interpersonal skills. They’re essential for professional success.
Workable.com, n.d.
Workable goes on to list 15 essential soft skills. Do you see any connections between your pain points and these skills?
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Problem-solving
- Time management
- Critical thinking
- Decision-making
- Organizational
- Stress management
- Adaptability
- Conflict management
- Leadership
- Creativity
- Resourcefulness
- Persuasion
- Openness to criticism
I deliberately used the word “skills” to highlight that these are learnable behaviors. Have I mastered these skills? No, not even close. It takes time and practice to improve. I spent the first 10 years of my career focused on the “what” of my job, such as learning research-based treatment programs and the necessary requirements of my job.
For the past five years, I’ve been increasingly focusing on the “how” of service delivery. Don’t be discouraged by my slow journey! We all have reasons why some skills are easier or harder for us to learn and implement. Even though these skills don’t come easily to me, I recognize that improving my soft skills will reduce some of the challenges I experience at work. Any benefit to my personal life is icing on the cake!
Does this feel daunting? I hope not! The World Economic Forum reports that many soft skills can be learned in less than five months.
If you’re looking for a place to start, I highly recommend Lauren Schwabish’s course on Medbridge.
Lauren’s course on soft skills for SLPs (and other therapists)
Lauren Schwabish, MA, CCC-SLP is a vendor for Brain Injury Services of Virginia, a program consultant for Can Do Multiple Sclerosis, and a contributor at Honeycomb Speech Therapy. She is also on the advisory boards for the Dementia Society of America, the Stroke Comeback Center, and A Purposeful Day.
In other words, Lauren is a knowledgeable speaker on the topic of soft skills. I thoroughly enjoyed her course, “Creative Approaches to Delivering Skilled, Person-Centered Rehabilitation*.” I found her to be charismatic and engaging, with plenty of concrete recommendations and resources. Her 1.5 hour-long course was packed with concrete recommendations and resources. I highly recommend it!
*This is an affiliate link. At no extra cost to you, you can help keep Eat, Speak, & Think sustainable if you subscribe through this link or use the code EatSpeakThink. Learn more about the discount.
Why goal-setting is so challenging
We all know that we’re supposed to provide person-centered care. Sometimes that’s straightforward. It’s easy to write meaningful goals when our patient knows what they want to work on.
But many times, our patients just want to be the way they used to be. I can’t tell you the number of times my patient has told me that they just want “a better memory”. For what? “Everything.”
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a truly SMART goal from that vague wish? If you’re a practicing therapist, then the answer is probably “yes”!
Figuring out what to work on when our patients don’t already have their own ideas relies on our soft skills. At the least, we have to employ:
- Critical thinking
- Problem solving
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Decision-making
- Time management.
Moving from a vague idea to a concrete, person-centered goal relies on many soft skills that we’re not typically taught in grad school. No wonder so many of us struggle!
The next session discusses the “what” of person-centered care, followed by the “how”, based on Lauren’s course.
Hard skills: The “what” of person-centered care
Hard skills are the tangible knowledge and skills we learn in graduate school. The medical model thrived on hard skills. Give norm-referenced or criterion-referenced standardized test to find out what is “wrong”, then devise a treatment plan to “fix” it.
But we all know we’ve switched from a medical model (treat what is broken) to a person-centered model of health care delivery. This shift is “starkly different,” in the words of Sarah Baar, who goes on to say:
That’s because it’s all about using personally relevant stimuli and goals to make a difference in the things that matter for each individual person.
Baar, 2020
Now, I’m not saying that we didn’t need to use soft skills under the medical model. But a clinician could excel under the medical model while having terrible soft skills – remember House, that cranky but brilliant doctor?
Now that we’re using a person-centered model, soft skills are essential. But which ones are most important? There are 15 listed above! Let’s turn to Lauren’s recommendations for assessment.
Specifically, Lauren discussed the “person-centered assessment toolkit.” I’m sharing the elements here:
- Patient-reported outcome measures
- Needs-based questionnaires
- Observing real-life activities
- Motivational interviewing
- Collaborative goal setting.
You’ve probably heard of all of these. The first two are standardized questionnaires that you can readily find online. I’ve shared many of these tools on my site, like these for cognition and these for swallowing.
Next comes observation. We’re trained to observe people engage in real-life activities in graduate school, but maybe we don’t leverage that as much as we could in practice.
And finally, motivational interviewing and collaborative goal setting are skills that we can learn. Lauren discusses these in depth in her course, along with examples and helpful resources.
We can use motivational interviewing, combined with questionnaires and observation, to engage in collaborative goal setting. By using our soft skills, we can help pinpoint truly meaningful goals and therapy activities.
Soft skills: The “how” of person-centered care
Lauren’s course shines with multiple examples of how rehab therapists can apply soft skills in their work. She provides specific examples from her own speech therapy practice. Lauren also shares specific tools and resources intended to help us improve HOW we provide person-centered assessment and treatment.
One element I’ll discuss is active listening. Even if you routinely use active listening, you may learn something new and helpful here!
Active listening is a crucial skill and one that we can always work to improve. Active listening is more than just letting others talk and then rephrasing what they say. We know how important body language is, right? Well, one point Lauren makes is that we can’t really engage in active listening when we’re behind our computer. Even if we ARE listening, our patient’s perception is that our attention is divided.
Here are some of Lauren’s key points:
- Give the speaker your undivided attention and show this in your body language.
- Don’t interrupt, even to reflect back what you’re hearing.
- Keep this about the speaker – don’t share your personal stories that you think relate to what you’re hearing.
- Ask curious (but unobtrusive) questions to elicit more information.
Lauren discusses how to be mindful of time management and be sure we provide skilled intervention. We can’t spend an entire session allowing our patient or their care partner to unload on us!
But allowing our patient some time to share how things are going for them and what is important to them that day will help us steer the session into a meaningful direction.
Lauren provides excellent examples and suggestions in her course, along with other topics under the “how” of person-centered care.
What to say to your patients
Lauren found a great resource for active listening online, from Boston University’s Office of the Ombuds. If you search for “Boston University Office of Ombuds active listening”, you should find two helpful PDFs. (I could only find them on search, no direct link to the source so I can’t link directly here.) But I’ll share some examples of what to say, from the “Active Listening Handout.”
Paraphrasing:
- “What I’m hearing is…”
- “Sounds like you’re saying…”
- “So, as you see it…”
- “It sounds like what’s most important to you is…”
Clarifying:
- “I’m not sure that I quite understand. Do you mean that…?”
- “Can you say more about…?”
- “You’ve given me a lot of information. Let me see if I’ve got it all…”
Reflecting:
- “I get the sense that you might be feeling afraid about what might happen if…”
- “To me, it sounds like you’re frustrated about what was said. I’m wondering if you’re also feeling a little hurt by it.”
- “It seems like you felt confused and worried when that happened.”
- “So, you’re saying that you were feeling more frightened than angry.”
Summarizing:
- “Let me summarize what I’ve heard so far.”
- “So, on the one hand… but on the other hand…”
- “It sounds like there are two things that really matter the most to you…”
A few of Lauren’s tools
To conclude, I’ll just share a couple of specific treatment ideas that Lauren shared during the course. The key point to remember is that these were tools that she used in response to her patient’s needs. In other words, she started with what was important to her patient during the session and chose these tools to help meet their needs.
One tool she described was using the Mood Meter to help patients and family report how they are feeling. (Search online to find different examples of the Mood Meter.) Lauren used the Mood Meter as a teaching tool, helping a patient to identify activities that brought him into the desirable yellow and green zones.
Another tool Lauren described making was a “Ready, Set, Go” sign to place by the door. She did this by having her patient lay out the items they needed to take with them when they left the house. Lauren snapped a picture, printed it out, and taped it to the wall by the front door. This visual aid reminded her patient to take necessary items when they left the house. Add labels if your patient has word retrieval problems.
Check out her course for more great ideas!
Learn more about soft skills for SLPs
As we wrap up, it’s clear that the power of soft skills in our field goes beyond just being ‘nice to have.’ They are essential tools that enrich our professional practice and deepen the impact we have on our clients’ lives. Integrating soft skills into our practice doesn’t just benefit our clients; it also brings a new depth to our work as SLPs. Remember, the art of speech-language pathology isn’t just in the science, but also in the heart and understanding we bring to each interaction.
While there are many soft skills that we can learn to help us be more effective, learning more about motivational interviewing may give you the biggest leg up. Here are a couple of resources you may find helpful:
- Stanford Medicine – flip the tabs for examples of what to say at each stage of readiness.
- 10 communication tips inspired by MI.
- Honeycomb Speech Therapy’s MI cheat sheet withe examples of what to say.
- Motivational Interviewing: Supporting Your Patients in the Digital Age* (Medbridge CEU course).
*This is an affiliate link. At no extra cost to you, you can help keep Eat, Speak, & Think sustainable if you subscribe through this link or use the code EatSpeakThink. Learn more about the discount.
Related Eat, Speak, & Think posts
- Assess readiness to change for better therapy outcomes.
- Collaborative goal-setting to identify meaningful cognitive goals.
- Goal Attainment Scaling tutorial.
- Writing SMART memory goals for a reluctant patient.
Key references
- Schwabish, L. (n.d.) Creative Approaches to Delivering Skilled, Person-Centered Rehabilitation. Medbridge. Retrieved December 27, 2023, from https://www.medbridge.com/courses/details/creative-approaches-to-delivering-skilled-person-centered-rehabilitation-recorded-webinar-lauren-schwabish.
- Workable. (n.d.) What are soft skills? Retrieved December 27, 2023, from https://resources.workable.com/hr-terms/what-are-soft-skills.
- World Economic Forum. (2020, October 21). These are the top 10 job skills of tomorrow – and how long it takes to learn them. Retrieved December 27, 2023, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them/.
Free DIRECT download: What to say during an initial evaluation (cheat sheet). (Email subscribers get free access to all the resources in the Free Subscription Library.)
Featured image by RobinHiggins from pixabay, found on Canva.com.
Lisa earned her M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, San Diego.
She participated in research studies with the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the University of Maryland in the areas of aphasia, Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, and fluency disorders.
Lisa has been working as a medical speech-language pathologist since 2008. She has a strong passion for evidence-based assessment and therapy, having earned five ASHA Awards for Professional Participation in Continuing Education.
She launched EatSpeakThink.com in June 2018 to help other clinicians be more successful working in home health, as well as to provide strategies and resources to people living with problems eating, speaking, or thinking.
Be First to Comment