Interprofessional Collaborative Care, Interdisciplinary Care and Why It Matters…

I formally entered the work force as an SLP in January, 2008.   I worked in post-acute neurological rehabilitation mainly with the pediatric/adolescent population.  I liked almost every aspect of being an SLP, but I had always been drawn to the medical and clinical/neurological aspect.  As I was able to treat patients across the lifespan (the facility worked with adults and pediatrics and census drove the caseload) I realized that “my thing” wasn’t a specific area of Speech Therapy, it was the all encompassing world of neurorehabilitation. 

I wanted to understand how to care for the people on my caseload.  I learned how to help transfer them, how to get them into therapeutic positioning, how to don splints and orthotics.  I observed the other disciplines and would implement tasks that would  help them work on their other goals in speech as carryover while working on speech/language goals.  The best stories of recovery were ones where the different disciplines worked together to improve skills for functional goals and quality of life.  

In 2020, I started working on my clinical doctorate (SLPD).  The courses I chose as a part of my individualized curriculum were in different areas of neurological rehabilitation. I looked at the perspective of different team members and contributors to the field (occupational therapy, physical therapy, psychology, nursing, cellular neurobiology,etc).  This gave me a wider lens to look through regarding neurological rehabilitation.  These courses really inspired me to explore the different aspects of collaborative care.  From there, I easily identified that interdisciplinary care would be the focus of my capstone project in the context of pediatric neurological rehabilitation.

The following information about neurological rehabilitation, interdisciplinary care, my IDC project, the survey completed for the project, as well as resources, supports and (finally) the dream are below.