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September 8, 2008

Heritage adds speech-language therapists

Pathologists treat communication and swallowing disorders

T. J. ROYAL

Heritage Hospital in Tarboro recently made history when it hired two full-time speech-language pathologists for the first time.

Heritage's Rehabilitation Therapy Service Manager Linda Williams-Brown said that with George "Sonny" Johnson III and Matthew Eiben at the hospital, Edgecombe County patients will no longer have to go to hospitals in Greenville, Raleigh or elsewhere to receive speech therapy services.

Speech-language pathologists, also called speech therapists, diagnose, treat and rehabilitate patients who have communication or swallowing disorders.

According to the federal Department of Labor, speech therapists work with patients with a wide range of disorders, from stuttering to cerebral palsy. Also, they work with patients whose disorders developed for varied reasons, either from physical deformities, like cleft palette, a cognitive disability, like mental retardation, or from a stroke.

So far, Heritage offers five therapies each for adults and children. Adult therapies range from helping stroke victims relearn to speak and express thought, to training people to speak through valves after having their larynx removed.

Child therapies include treatment for stuttering, as well as helping children express their needs.

One therapy is available to both adults and children at Heritage, for those who have swallowing disorders and choking problems.

With two full-time therapists at Heritage, the hospital now has a person dedicated each to in-patient and out-patient therapies. Johnson, 54, a Tarboro native, will focus on out-patient therapy with Eiben, 24, from Rice, Va., focusing on in-patient services.

Before Eiben and Johnson arrived last month, Heritage had a speech therapist opening for a year, Williams-Brown said. When the position was filled, only one person was responsible for all of Heritage's in-patient and out-patient speech therapies, Williams-Brown said.

As part of his in-patient care, Eiben said he assists patients in surgery and the intensive care unit. During surgery, he said he will examine X-rays with a radiologist to check on the condition of a patient's throat and mouth.

In surgery and therapy, one thing Eiben checks for is a potentially deadly condition called aspiration; a condition where food enters the lungs instead of going into the stomach.

Although they are focusing on different areas, both men said they received similar clinical experience, treating various age groups and communication disorders. Both men said they could cover each other's responsibilities if they needed to.

Along with being a speech therapist, Johnson is also an audiologist. He will be able to assist Heritage patients with hearing disorders and difficulties by, for example, fitting them with hearing aids and performing therapy.

While they will provide 10 services between them, Johnson said he wants to help people who are stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

According to the non-profit ALS Association, the incurable disease affects a person's muscles, gradually leaving them unable to move. Eventually, ALS patients' throat and chest muscles are affected, forcing them to rely on machine assistance for survival. But ALS patients' sense of sight, smell, taste and touch are unaffected by the disease most of the time.

Even when a person is physically debilitated, Johnson said that it "doesn't keep (them) from giving up, to want to be social."

And, Johnson added, there is now technology that has caught up with patients' aspirations.

He said there is now a program that allows ALS patients to communicate, simply by looking at images on a computer screen and blinking their eyes.

Eiben said that people do not often think about how important having the ability to communicate is in a person's recovery. As traumatizing as losing the ability to walk is, Eiben said that losing the ability to communicate affects a patient's well being just as much.

Johnson is the son of George Johnson Jr., of Tarboro, and the late Virginia Dare "Penny" Johnson. Before he came to Heritage last month, he worked as a state health care consultant in Eastern North Carolina for 27 years.

He said he made the switch to private health care after his mother passed away from a stroke four years ago. Patients who need speech language pathology therapy often have suffered from a stroke, Johnson said.

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