Speak Out October 2020 DIGITAL EDITION FINAL

Matthew Fong, top right, at work with two of the TBI telehealth communication group members.

client asked whether he could connect with other people to practice his communication skills, it was as if a light bulb had gone off— "what if we started a communication group online to help individuals with TBI connect with one another?" The benefits of group therapy for individuals with TBI to work on their communication skills are well documented. Practising in a group setting enables participants to learn from one another and share their experiences and strategies about living with a TBI. Conversations also occur in a more realistic social environment, something that cannot be as easily replicated in individual speech pathology sessions. The idea of running communication therapy in groups where participants all gathered physically in the same room had been considered many times at IRS; however, there were several challenges associated with setting the groups up. The fact that our clients were located all over metropolitan and outer suburban Melbourne made it difficult to find a central physical location to host a group that all participants would be willing to travel to. Many of our clients were also restricted in how far they could travel, due to either an inability to drive or being reliant on limited public transport or busy family members to take them. With many services already transitioned to telehealth; however, the idea that someone could connect with others without having to leave the house opened up the opportunity for an online telehealth communication group. When the first telehealth communication group session started up in May 2020, it was just two clients meeting together for the first time in a telehealth virtual room. Since then, IRS now runs two different telehealth communication groups that are scheduled fortnightly. At the start of each group, the participants share what communication-specific goal(s) they are currently working on. These goals are

individual to each client and are worked on in one-to- one sessions with their speech pathologist concurrent to participating in the group sessions. For example, one client is working on asking more social questions to show that he listening to others, while another client’s goal is to keep track of a group conversation when there are multiple people involved. Alongside each clients’ individualised goals, there are general goals and skills that all participants work on during the group sessions. Homework tasks are set at the end of each meeting and can include encouraging participants to think of a topic of discussion that they want to bring up at the next session. This often includes thinking about something that happened during the week or retelling an event in the news—both tasks that require idea generation, narrative skills, and the ability to remember events and information. Each group session also has a set activity, such as having a debate, role playing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ communication scenarios, or discussing hypothetical situations like, “what would you take to survive if you were stranded on an island?” Key to all these activities is that the clients participate in light hearted and fun discussion whilst also working on key communication skills such as negotiation, problem solving, turn-taking and active listening skills. One of the benefits of running a telehealth communication group has been the use of the waiting room function to provide clients with individualised feedback after the session. The speech pathologist is able to put other participants in the waiting room so that they can speak, privately, one-on-one with each client afterwards. This can be used to gauge the client’s impressions of how they thought the meeting went, and for the speech pathologist to provide feedback on positive communication skills and

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October 2020 | Speak Out

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