Speech Language Pathology in the Intensive Care Unit
Recorded Course – 0.8 ASHA CEUS
Presented by Nicole Langton-Frost, MA, CCC-SLP, BCS-S
Are you familiar with the different types of intensive care units (ICU)?
ICUs like…
Surgical Intensive Care
Neurosciences Critical Care
Cardiac Medicine and Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care
Medicine Intensive Care
Oncology Intensive Care
As soon as you step foot into any of these ICUs, you might feel an eerie sense of stillness.
Like the calm before the storm.
As you quietly search for an empty workstation, the chirping monitors and ringing vent alarms set off a mental checklist of what you need to look for in the medical chart.
Was this patient intubated? For how long?
What can I pull from their lab and imaging reports?
What’s their diet status?
Which precautions do I need to be aware of?
It’s a lot. And grad school may not have prepared you for the variety of medical data you need to understand across various ICUs.
Which is exactly why we’re bringing Nicole Langton-Frost, MA CCC-SLP, BCS-S to provide a full-day course titled Speech-Language Pathology in the Intensive Care Unit
“This course covers all of the things I wish I learned before working in acute care.”
~Nicole Langton-Frost, MA CCC-SLP, BCS-S
Spend an entire day learn things like:
The different types of ICUs and the SLP’s role.
How different medical diagnoses and surgical procedures might influence swallowing, communication, and cognition
What the Alberta Stroke Program Early Computed Tomography Score (ASPECTS) is
How the ASPECTS and TICI may influence the medical presentation of stroke patients following an acute stroke.
Swallow intervention in acute care
Tracheostomy and AAC in the ICU
Which information is essential to identify in the medical chart to guide clinical decision making
How to collaborate with a multi-disciplinary team in the ICU
What the Thrombolysis in Cerebral Infarction (TICI) score is
Disorders of consciousness, impaired cognition, and delirium in the ICU
Okay, that’s a lot to take in, so we broke it down into three actionable takeaways you’ll gain after completing this course:
- Know which areas of the chart to focus on (i.e. know how the patient is currently presenting and how they may progress)
- Build or improve multidisciplinary teams across a variety of ICUs
- Know how to intervene with low level of consciousness patients (and how to make it personalized)
What makes this course unique?
While there’s a focus on SLP literature as it relates to ICU care, the overall focus of this full-day course is on medical literature.
Literature that helps SLP better understand things like…
What ECMO is…
What a thrombectomy is and why it matters…
Which medications influence swallowing…
Why a stroke patient might get worse before they get better (and what to look for to better predict this)
“Even when patients are super critically ill and some may think that ‘This patient will never get better,’ sometimes they do get better. We need to give them a chance to get better as long as it would not cause harm. We should be intervening in the ICU.”
~Nicole Langton-Frost, MA CCC-SLP, BCS-S
Why we’re honored to have Nicole Langton-Frost teach us about ICU care:
Nicole is a board-certified swallow specialist with 12 years of experience across a variety of medical settings.
She currently works full-time as the therapy team leader across all of acute care at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
She’s also the director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital advanced ICU fellowship program.
Her passion for acute care and supporting complex medical cases shows up in her work, her teaching, as well as her research (her most recent publication is dedicated to neuroplasticity in COVID-19 care 🙌 )
She’s also an avid hiker, international traveler, and knows how to crochet.
Basically, she can alter the course of someone’s plan of care across all ICUs, teach SLPs how to do the same, and crochet a cozy scarf for outdoor international adventures without hesitation 😉
If you’re ready to supercharge your ICU skills, build confidence, and give greater hope to some of the most medically fragile patients…
…then you’re ready for this full-day course.