aphasia access envisions a world where healthcare providers businesses and community leaders all know the tools that help people with aphasia navigate life whether that life exists in acute or rehabilitation care ongoing services or community life in general in the first few days after a stroke everyone needs information regarding their health but if a person has aphasia it is very hard for them to understand what their healthcare providers are trying to tell them and they often cannot ask questions and be understood they wonder what has happened to them why they cannot speak and why they have difficulty understanding what others are saying they need information about stroke in general and their conditions specifically in this video you will learn how to use effective communication methods to achieve important goals in the acute care setting providing health education you can play an important role in helping to provide essential health information in a way that a person with aphasia can understand by adjusting your communication methods effectively you can provide communication access to information about aphasia about stroke and about other important details regarding the hospital experience number one information about stroke people need information about how the brain works what type of brain damage they have had what their problems are and what kind of assessments and treatments they will have number two information about the brain damage you can help the person with aphasia to understand what has happened to their brain and a bit about how the brain works you may want to use aphasia friendly illustrations to help explain this complex topic so let me explain a little bit to you you know that the stroke you know that the stroke affects the brain did you know that that's now i i now you have a bit of an idea okay okay so that's not a surprise because the left side of your brain it's doing the work for the right side of the body for movement okay but i want to talk to you about the left side of the brain and how that is involved with communication number three information about tests and treatments people with aphasia are often not aware of what type of tests and treatments that they will be experiencing you can help by giving them the important information in a way that they can understand so what it is they call it an mri and it's a scan of the brain you go into a machine like that they put you in it's not dangerous it's okay it's no danger right but it does feel a little bit tight in there okay so just warning you you might feel a little bit stuck but it is safe there's no danger to it all right number four establishing informed consent the process for getting permission before conducting healthcare intervention is more difficult for the person with aphasia it is important to use effective communication strategies and graphic materials to ensure understanding of the information do you have any questions it's like an x-ray it's like an x-ray you know what an x-ray is but it takes your whole body and goes slowly through the machine is that okay i know so is that all right with you yes okay do you have any other questions about that no no nothing no no okay okay so it's okay with you and you know what it's about so i'm going to ask you if you don't mind you and i'm going to give you a copy you can take this home you own home to your ward when your wife comes you can show her okay so if you can sign how is the writing can you sign your name okay great and i'll write your name in for you number five information about aphasia the condition of aphasia is mysterious and frightening your information is an important element in ensuring that the person understands what has happened to them and feels supported in their hospital experience there are a number of key topics that you will want to discuss starting the rehabilitation process while the time in acute care is limited you can set the stage for positive rehabilitation experience by introducing a number of important concepts in the early days competence people with aphasia are often treated as though they are no longer intelligent you can explain that you understand that they are still competent in individuals despite the aphasia they will appreciate this acknowledgement very much i've just given you a new word and the new word is aphasia right but there's lots of good news about aphasia even though it's so hard to talk we know that you're you're intelligent do you agree right now not you're not feeling so intelligent right when you can't speak it's hard to show that okay but we know that you're intelligent we know that you know you know what you want okay you're competent you're competent and you can make your own decisions changes in speech listening reading and writing after a stroke people need to understand why they may have difficulties in speaking understanding spoken language reading and writing and now i'm asking you to think about more the things around your communication right yeah okay so what are you noticing right now the thing that's most affected must it must be really frustrating yeah yeah yeah okay have you noticed that reading is difficult have you tried to pick up a book in the last two weeks or no you haven't you haven't noticed okay have you tried to write anything no no i haven't tried enough no no of course you wouldn't have gone near a computer you've really been pretty much in the bed haven't you yeah okay all right that left side of the brainchris controls the talking and things that are sort of like that the reading and the writing okay and all of those things are what we use for communication communication in the early days most people focus on improvements in speaking the idea of communicating in other ways using gesture writing pointing to pictures does not usually occur naturally you can help by introducing this concept and starting to practice these strategies so we're going to look at the communication to be able to think about any way any way we can get the message moving forward back forward back so we can be communicating we all love the speech most right we love speech most i know but we're going to think about communication in lots of different ways and work on the speech okay understanding the recovery pathway people need to know about what to expect as they recover from the stroke and aphasia makes it hard for them to get this information there are a number of issues that you can help them to understand including moving away from acute care to rehabilitation that recovery takes time that progress will be slow but that there is hope acute care to rehabilitation you can explain the future transition from acute care to the rehabilitation setting right now right now you're in the hospital right now you're in the hospital and soon hopefully you're going to be moved and from the hospital you're going to go into rehab where there you're going to get therapy there you will have therapy okay but right now in the hospital you're only going to see me for maybe one or two weeks and hopefully you're gonna get stronger and stronger okay this is just the beginning and then you'll move into rehab okay so right now this is where we are all right recovery takes time you can explain how the recovery process takes a lot of time see that that says january that says february march april you know what one needs one needs to have a lot of patience one needs to not look at the clock you can't look at the clock okay the brain is a very very complicated engine and when something happens and the brain function changes the fixing tends to be very slow telling one story of the stroke most people want to tell others about their experience of having a stroke the aphasia presents a barrier limiting the opportunities for them to tell their story you can help by assisting them to express themselves using effective communication methods one day talk i cannot read read f will happen what happened not talk for you there is hope it is vitally important that you talk explicitly about hope you can help people feel hopeful by explaining that they will make progress and that communication will improve but it's really early early days only 10 days okay so so all i can say to you is richard try not to worry too much let the days roll into each other rather you wait for a month and then think hmm look what i've got back right because you see the brain is changing every day the brain is still changing it had an injury it had an injury and like when you have a really bad injury every day the bruising changes a little bit changes a little bit so let's be hopeful things are going things are going well okay your skill as a communication partner is the best way for you to help the person with aphasia to engage in a conversation with you regardless of the topic just like a person with a wheelchair is provided physical access via wheelchair ramp you can ensure that people with aphasia are provided communication access through using a set of basic techniques using these techniques in the acute care setting you can provide essential information about aphasia about stroke and about other important details regarding the hospital experience