Subject
Today I would like to present to you a relevant topic for analysis, since science has not yet figured out how to prevent or reduce the risk of aphasia. Thus, we will focus not on the analysis of the disease itself and preventive approaches to its preventive treatment, but on practical methods of treating the ailment with the intervention of a professional physician.
Agenda
The paper consists of 5 core elements that gradually present the issue from different perspectives. I will begin by explaining the purpose of the medical intervention in the lives of aphasia patients, after which I will proceed directly to the formalities of the treatment protocol. I will focus most of my attention on the case study and its analysis in terms of usefulness and likelihood of reducing the manifestation of the disease. This will be followed by the concluding sections of summation and evaluation, which will present the conclusions from the ongoing experiment with the introduction of a medical professional to work with a person affected by aphasia.
Goal of Intervention
Aphasia is a complex disease that cannot cure itself over time and requires gradual and ongoing work on itself. According to Hinckley et al, individuals with aphasia need a steady stream of news about social assistance, financial support, training in new communication techniques, and maintaining hope (2013). Constant communication with people with aphasia requires medical professionals who can relax the patient and set the patient up for communication while maintaining a business-like tone of conversation (Doogan et al., 2018).
The Details of the Treatment Protocol
The treatment protocol in this case is not overly formalized and leaves little room for free and safe action. There are four important components to the Reciprocal Scaffolding Treatment (RST) treatment protocol. Firstly, the RST protocol requires only professional doctors to perform the treatment. Secondly, the doctor must teach the patient techniques that can be used to integrate into a group of individuals through communication. Thirdly, the treating professionals must have extensive experience with language modification, but they must not have prior experience with people with aphasia. The therapist must independently choose a communication strategy that can be used by their patient in the process of integration into the social group.
Intervention Demonstration
Now let us move on to a case study of a patient with aphasia, conducted in 2009 by Jan Avent et al. of California state university. The essence of the experiment was to present peer education as the main method of treatment for patients (Avent et al., 2008). After receiving regular procedures to improve communication, the patients then also played the role of teachers, forcing them to communicate from different role positions.
More specifically, over the course of 7 weeks, in 12 sessions, an aphasia expert (AE) presented an independent communication strategy for the interacting patient that would allow him to integrate with any group of individuals. To analyze the results, they used the ‘FAS’ test, which required the patient to name words beginning with F, A, and S within a specified time frame. The final results were assessed in terms of the number of words named, the average cluster size, and the number of letter-to-letter switches.
At the same time, after the first session, the patient had to interact with a group of other patients to explain their learning techniques, which exposed them to the role of teacher and forced them to apply a different communication model. Patients spent time together for 55 minutes with observing scientists, who mostly monitored and sometimes helped to resume communication for people with aphasia.
The results showed an average increase in the number of words written out in each case with an average result of 7 words. Thus, over seven weeks, patients were able to increase their performance on this test by 30.4 percent, which is a satisfactory result of the experiment and shows the effectiveness of group communication sessions with a change from the role of the listener to the role of the teacher.
Summary
To summarize, RST is a specific approach to the gradual treatment of aphasia in patients with moderate to mild disease. In this experiment, RST was used in a group of patients with approximately the same level of exposure to the disease, who had interaction sessions over a period of 7 weeks. During each session, patients had to communicate in different roles, being either a student or a teacher. The teacher’s task was to deliver one of the strategies for effective integration into the social community, while the student had to listen diligently and be able to retell the perceived information. As a result of the experiment, the patients were able to improve their word choice performance with the ‘FAS-test,’ which showed an average increase of 30.4% in terms of quantity and quality of word choice for the aphasic patients.
Evaluation
The results show that role reversal is an effective method of increasing the communicability of aphasic patients. According to the textbook, RST makes people with diminished communicative abilities use a wider vocabulary, without requiring them to do too much, but making them show a sense of responsibility through an imposed teacher role (Papathanasiou et al., 2013). The results of the experiments also demonstrate the patients’ commitment to this strategy, as they showed their own desire to maximize their progress (Marshall et al., 2018). Moreover, by learning in groups with the same people as them, but with a clearly defined task and assigned roles, patients could not show psychological frustration and a professional approach on both sides kept them motivated to work, which lasted a very significant time compared to the average time of uninterrupted communication in the domestic setting (Purves et al., 2013).
References
Avent, J., Patterson, J., Lu, A., & Small, K. (2008). Reciprocal scaffolding treatment: A person with aphasia as clinical teacher.Aphasiology, 23(1), 110–119. Web.
Doogan, C., Dignam, J., Copland, D., & Leff, A. (2018). Aphasia Recovery: When, how and who to treat? Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, 18(12). Web.
Hinckley, J. J., Hasselkus, A., & Ganzfried, E. (2013). What people living with aphasia think about the availability of aphasia resources.American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(2). Web.
Marshall, C. R., Hardy, C. J. D., Volkmer, A., Russell, L. L., Bond, R. L., Fletcher, P. D.,… Warren, J. D. (2018). Primary progressive aphasia: a clinical approach.Journal of Neurology, 265(6), 1474–1490. Web.
Papathanasiou, I., Coppens, P., & Potagas, C. (2013). Aphasia and related neurogenic communication disorders. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Purves, B. A., Petersen, J., & Puurveen, G. (2013). An aphasia mentoring program: perspectives of speech-language pathology students and of mentors with aphasia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(2). Web.