A game changer in delivering therapy and supporting patients

Patient Stories

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Patient A
‍78 years old.
Left frontal stroke.

- Initially severe expressive and receptive aphasia – verbal output was 100% unintelligible characterised by jargon, reduced engagement in therapy activities- A had improved engagement with her family member, who requested activities that he could do with A outside of SLT sessions- SLT created a ‘board’ for A using Cognishine – the link was sent to her family member which meant he could access activities and continue to do them with A outside of SLT sessions- Therapy can then continue even after the service has come to an end- Email from family member stating that the activities were really useful and requesting more of them as they had gone through the current ones multiple times- By end of 6 week service, A was using total communication much more and communicating basic wants and needs, there was more intelligible words/phrases which supported functional communication

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Patient B
‍61 years old.
Acute right paramedian hematoma.

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Being seen as part of ESD - 6 week service at home following discharge.- Cognitive communication disorder characterised by perseveration of topic/idea, dominating conversation, reduced turn-taking, reduced awareness/insight into communication changes and new difficulties. Additional difficulties with attention and multi-tasking.- B was independently able to use mobile phone/ipad to access resources and actively engaged in therapy. B requested activities he could do outside of therapy sessions.- SLT created a ‘board’ for B with personalised activities that would work on above named deficits – e.g., one activity is ‘Point of view’ where the person looks at a picture that tells a story and has to describe how each of the people might be feeling/what they might say. B and his family member had increased tension between them due to B’s reduced awareness of his communication changes and difficulties identifying when his family member was busy and couldn’t talk. Following completing the activities with a family member and discussions with SLT in the next session, B stated that it was useful to think about how other people might be feeling. We were able to link that back to the ‘real world’ scenarios that he experiences. In the following sessions, B and his family reported an improvement in their communication and reduced tension.

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Patient C
59 years old.
Right thalamic lacuna infarct.
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- Cognitive communication disorder and receptive aphasia characterised by moderate-severe reading deficits, vague verbal output, and significantly reduced insight.- SLT primarily focused on attempting to raise insight as C had reduced engagement in therapy C engaged more with computer based tasks used with Cognishine and increased his insight. He stated following one exercise ‘yes that was hard, that’s a hard word, I found that hard’. Previously C had only stated that he found things ‘easy’ and it was ‘no problem’.- C was very active on his smart phone and computer and therefore computer based tasks were much more suited to him than paper based.

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