- A speech therapist most likely either works in a school system or out of a health agency. Cases will be given to the speech therapist and the speech therapist must then set up appointments with the clients. The therapist checks for available blocks of time. They then call the patient and set up a time to meet at the patient's home. If it is a school setting then the therapist will check with the teacher to make arrangements for a therapy lesson.
- The speech therapist must spend part of his day diagnosing the speech problems of any new patients. This can be anything from feeding and swallowing issues to finding a form of communication that the patient can learn, dealing with sensory problems or working on minor pronunciation issues. If the therapist doesn't know what the problem is then he cannot accurate form a plan to correct the problem. The therapist diagnoses the problem by reading reports from any doctor, talking with parents, talking with the patient and examining the patient.
- Once the therapist is clear about what the patient needs, she can begin planning a course of treatment. For children this is done in the form of an IEP or an Individualized Education Plan. The therapist must write down what the patient needs to work on, how they are going to work on it and what their goals are. The therapist must include how often they need to meet with the patient each week and for what period of time. A child may meet with a speech therapist twice per week for thirty minutes each time, but an adult might meet with the speech therapist three times per week for one hour.
- The last part of the speech therapist's day is spent evaluating the progress of his patients. If any changes need to be made, then the therapist can make note of that in the patients chart. Sometimes therapists must do a little research when they find that a part of the therapy isn't working. This is part of the evaluation process. The therapist uses medical journals, other speech therapists and the Internet for new ideas to use with the patients. The new ideas are discussed with the parents, teachers or patients and then implemented.
