Patient-Centered Treatment

Meet them where they are and be on the same team”.

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This is one thing I told my extern this week when discussing patient compliance and setting realistic tasks for patients.

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This was after a session with a BUSY type-A patient who is CEO of her own company and who was of the mindset of “I’m very busy, I don’t have time to practice, and I can’t change my speaking demands since my team needs me.”

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SO I worked with HER demands, schedule and priorities.

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I did NOT say, “cut out all of your coffee and wine, only speak for 3 hours a day, rest your voice, do drill practice of random m-words for 3 hours each day.” Because if I had said any of those things I knew she would likely

a) not follow recs, b) not trust me as a therapist who truly “got it” and c) possibly not come back to sessions.

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Instead, we had a long counseling session.

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I said “okay, you’re having 4 cups of coffee per day how can we reduce that to maybe 1 or 2 or switch your caffeine to tea instead of coffee?”

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I said, "okay so you have NO time and you work 12 hour non-stop days. I hear you.

- Do you drive? (Yes)- BOOM, you’re doing hums and resonant voice work in the car.

- Do you shower in the morning? BAM, vocal warm-up time before your first meeting.

- Do you control your meeting duration (‘Yes, but I have to always get as much in as possible’) BING, well we’re making your meetings 5 mins shorter to 3 mins of straw phonation between back to back meetings.

- Can you spread out meetings across the day/week if you really had to? (‘I guess so’). CHA-CHING: we are staggering your meetings.

- So you say you forget to think about your voice during your crazy busy work day? Fair enough. You’re making old school post-it reminders for your computer screen!

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See what I did there? I worked WITH her demands and showed her specifically HOW it was possible.

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I also asked her how much of a priority this was (it was big) and if she wanted to deal with this voice issue long term (course not).

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Nothing is impossible, it’s just how we prioritize and look at things.

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As a voice therapist that is as much my job as the voice therapy techniques I teach 💜