On August 29, 2023, two members of the Ukrainian Society for Speech and Language Therapy, Anna Tomchuk and Khrystyna Hrytsko, attended a fantastic training on the extremely important and relevant issue of dysphagia, the Dysphagia course series, in beautiful Lyon, France.
Two highly qualified Austrian speech and language therapists: Shelly Trapl-Grundschober from Tulln and Björn Degen from Vienna shared how speech and language therapists should diagnose, assess and plan therapy for swallowing disorders. Shelly Trapl-Grunddchober, one of the developers of the GUSS screening, which is widely used in Europe for swallowing screening, shared the various subtleties of this screening. Thus, our members had a great opportunity to learn about the most widely used swallowing assessment tools.
Also during this course, different therapeutic techniques for swallowing recovery and tips for planning effective swallowing recovery work were discussed in detail. This training is really very important since the duties of a speech and language therapist include swallowing diagnosis and therapy.
Also, our members Anna and Khrystyna had the opportunity to attend the European Conference on Neurorehabilitation, which took place from August 30 to September 2. This conference was attended by experts from all over the world, so our members were able to hear about the latest research on aphasia, music therapy, and get practical advice on restoring cognitive functions such as memory, attention, problem solving, etc. It was a great pleasure to meet wonderful speech and language therapy specialists from different countries, to communicate and share experiences.
As an organization for which it is important to create conditions for the professional development of our members, we are very grateful to EVER Pharma for the grant for the trip to the EFNR Congress and ESO, which covered the costs associated with the trip and provided an opportunity to gain quality knowledge at the conference. This is a great honor and opportunity for us!
The visit of two members to this conference helped to bring quality knowledge and to provide even better services in speech and language therapy and share this knowledge in Ukraine.
Upon returning to Ukraine as part of the ACURE project, Anna Tomchuk shared her knowledge on September 15, 2023 in Rivne at the Central City Hospital, where she spoke more about how to diagnose, assess, and plan therapy for swallowing disorders. And on December 16, in Vinnytsia, at the Olsvit Neurorehabilitation Center, where invited German doctors gathered, a member of our society spoke on such an important topic as dysphagia and the role of a speech and language therapist in swallowing management in patients.
Step by step, we are building a modern and progressive speech and language therapy in the healthcare sector in Ukraine, which absorbs the best world practices!
