The seven habits of highly effective aphasia therapists: The perspective of people living with aphasia

Abstract

Purpose: Influential value-driven approaches to aphasia rehabilitation have been proposed previously, but have emphasised how service providers need to deliver their services. The aim of this article is to extract a set of values or habits that define effective aphasia therapists, from a 16-year programme of research that has sought to capture the perspectives of people with aphasia, their family and speech-language pathologists.

Method: The findings of 58 studies published by members of our team which have sought the views of people with aphasia (38 studies), speech-language pathologists (11 studies) and family members (5 studies), and those which compared all stakeholder’s perspectives (2 studies), were synthesised into seven themes. Presented as habits, these were subsequently described in the same manner as the popular “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.

Result: The seven habits of highly effective aphasia therapists described by people with aphasia and their family were (1) Prioritise relationships; (2) Find a rope team; (3) Begin with the end in mind; (4) Practise SMARTER therapy; (5) Leave no person behind; (6) Look behind the mask and (7) Find a voice.

Conclusion: While there are similarities to other value-based approaches to aphasia rehabilitation, these seven habits are detailed using our published research that has privileged the voices of people with aphasia. The seven habits therefore reflect what people with aphasia view as the features of highly effective aphasia therapists. The next steps are to identify how to evaluate evidence-based practices in these areas and ensure their implementation into practice. Effective aphasia therapists are at the heart of effective aphasia rehabilitation.

Keywords:

• stroke rehabilitation
• person-centred
• qualitative research
• clinical behaviour

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2019.1660804.