Global Teletherapy Helps Solve the Speech Therapy Staffing Shortage
Baltimore, MD, May 17, 2017 (Newswire.com) - School districts across the United States have been suffering from a shortage of speech-language pathologists for years now. It is particularly acute for rural schools. Due to their location, there are hardly any speech clinicians practicing in their geographic area. The saddest part of these staffing shortages is the damaging effect they have on the children in these areas who are in desperate need of speech therapy.
To combat this, a Baltimore-based company called Global Teletherapy has assembled a team of speech teletherapists who provide these schools with speech therapy services online via secure, two-way video conferencing.
"We use evidence-based practice to deliver traditional methods of speech therapy with the children. The children are generally very motivated by the interactive activities and games we can do over the computer."
Rina Goode, SLP
Telepractice clinicians are held to just as high a standard as in-person speech therapists. They are required, like any other speech clinician, to meet all of the requirements for SLPs as defined by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and hold ASHA's CCC-SLP certification.
Rina Goode, one of the SLPs at Global Teletherapy, revealed what they have been doing to help schools and children across the nation. She explained, "We use evidence-based practice to deliver traditional methods of speech therapy with the children. The children are generally very motivated by the interactive activities and games we can do over the computer."
By being the link between schools and therapists, Global Teletherapy has successfully been able to help clinicians find work while simultaneously providing speech therapy services to children who otherwise might not be able to receive it.
Online therapy has been used successfully since the late 1990s in tens of thousands of therapy sessions across the United States. It has been found to be an effective and appropriate treatment for speech disorders in 20 years of research by over 40 academic published peer-reviewed studies beginning with a landmark paper by the Mayo Clinic in 1997.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has recognized telepractice as an appropriate method of service delivery since 2005. Based on the substantial body of peer-reviewed research supporting it as an effective way to deliver speech therapy services, ASHA stated, "Telepractice is an appropriate model of service delivery for audiologists and speech-language pathologists."
In the upcoming months, Global Teletherapy hopes to expand its ever-growing network of therapists and to help more schools solve their speech therapist shortages.
Alan Goode
CEO of Global Teletherapy
w: https://globalteletherapy.com
e: alan@globalteletherapy.com
p: (888) 511-9395
Source: Global Teletherapy