By Keri Jaeger, President & CEO, Mount Evans Home Health Care & Hospice
“Communication is the essence of human life.”
-Dr. Janice Light
It’s easy to take basic communication skills for granted. When we can effortlessly communicate, we don’t give much thought to being able to express an idea through clear, articulate, understandable speech. But when we lose the ability to speak clearly and without effort, we instantly become aware of how large a part speech plays in our everyday lives. Losing the ability to speak can leave people feeling isolated and helpless.
May is Better Hearing & Speech Month and the perfect time to raise awareness about speech and language disorders and also recognize our speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Speech disorders are when a person is unable to produce speech sounds correctly or fluently or has problems with their voice or resonance. Language disorders are when a person has trouble understanding others or sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
Mount Evans Home Health Care & Hospice is proud to have experienced speech-language pathologists as a vital part of our interdisciplinary care team serving our mountain communities. They assess and treat cognitive, communication, speech, language, voice, and swallowing disorders that can result from the impact of surgery, stroke, neurological trauma, brain tumor, dementia, cognitive decline, living alone, or another injury or disease process.
Our speech-language pathologists work with patients to improve speech including articulation, vocal quality, volume, and projection. They also help with speech cognition, short- and long-term memory issues, the ability to understand and express ideas, and safe swallowing.
At Mount Evans, we understand the benefits of recovering at home and strive to give our patients the therapies they need to regain their ability to communicate. “Treating patients at home makes it easier to work on functional skills, as opposed to a hospital or office setting, where it can sometimes be more difficult to replicate real-life, individualized scenarios. We are also able to meet with family members that we may not have otherwise and get a firsthand look at how the patient is living and managing their activities of daily life,” explains Speech-Language Pathologist Taylor Seitz.
“As a smaller, nonprofit organization in the mountains staffed with employees who are also mountain residents, I think Mount Evans does a great job of providing quality, genuine care to our own community members that makes it feel like a family,” Seitz continues, “I’m so honored to be a small part of my patients’ and families’ rehabilitation journeys often times spanning from complete devastation to pure resilience. It’s hard not to stay in touch with patients or families when you’ve been through something of such depth together. Staying in touch and hearing stories of success from patients or families months or years later is one of my favorite things. They just continually inspire me.”
Mount Evans invites you, our foothills community, to join with our staff, administration, and board of directors in saying thank you to our Speech-Language Pathologists—you change lives for the better!
