This course provides a brief overview of narrative and conversational discourse. Emphasis is placed on the importance of discourse in patient-centered care and various approaches to incorporating discourse in aphasia rehabilitation.

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. This course reviews evidence-based practice and provides step-by-step training of a new semantically-based, sentence-level treatment approach for persons with aphasia: Semantic Priming to Improve Comprehension and Expression of Sentences (SPICES). (Part 1: Course 8293)

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. This course reviews evidence-based practice and provides an overview of relevant theory for the development of a new semantically-based sentence-level treatment approach for persons with aphasia: Semantic Priming to Improve Comprehension and Expression of Sentences (SPICES). (Part 2: Course 8296)

Many of the assessment instruments we use are norm-referenced tests that are standardized. There are certain statistical properties needed to understand the psychometric criteria of the tests, which is part of being an informed consumer. This course will help SLPs understand fundamental concepts of descriptive statistics so they can interpret test scores correctly and summarize quantitative data about their clients or patients.

Providing a prognosis for recovery for individuals with aphasia is an important part of clinical care, but accurate prediction is often limited. This course will discuss factors that influence recovery of language function following onset of aphasia, and biographical, behavioral, and medical variables that may aid provision of a prognosis.

This course will provide an overview of two evidence-based interventions for working with persons with dementia: Montessori-Based Dementia Programming and the Spaced Retrieval technique. Participants will learn about each intervention along with practical applications of each method to patients in different practice settings.

This course will review our current understanding of how the brain networks that underlie language processing may be functionally reorganized in aphasia. The discussion will be centered around four recent research publications.

Have you ever experienced the misperception that the Speech-Language Pathologist is an optional member of the rehabilitation team? This course will discuss how change in the healthcare environment requires Speech-Language Pathologists to proactively dispel this perception. It will highlight the critical importance of their role in ensuring positive patient outcomes through lessons from the field.

The ultimate goal of all speech-language pathology services is to improve quality of life, according to our Scope of Practice. This course will demonstrate how to measure outcomes and formulate reimbursable goals to address quality of life in aphasia.

Pearson's EBP Briefs are case-based courses designed to assist with everyday decision-making in clinical practice. This case will examine the clinical question, “Do persons with nonfluent aphasia demonstrate superior communicative effectiveness (e.g., more conversational turns) during augmentative/alternative communication (AAC) interventions utilizing grid displays (graphic symbols) than during AAC interventions utilizing scene displays (photographs)?” The related literature search and analysis, along with the resultant clinical decision and application to clinical practice, will also be discussed. A relevant assessment tool for this case is the WAB-R (Kertesz, 2006).