seen from Greece
seen from T1
seen from Philippines
seen from United States
seen from Tanzania
seen from T1
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Philippines
seen from Germany
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Greece
Because every job is different.
Miss Speechie reminds us that sometimes what we need more than a bugout bag in addition to our tactical EDC is an honest-to-goodness survival kit. I would imagine this is particularly true for our school-based comrades.
#SLPEDC
The fine folks at Tactus (sorry I still haven’t updated that Conversation Therappy review, guys! That’s coming!) recently had a guest post by @GingersGrocery about what goes into your SLP bugout bag that caught some traction on the interwebs. It’s a great idea, but I think it’s one that also deserves EveryDayCarry (AKA EDC) treatment, rather than just ICE status (though I’m always in favor of increased inclusion of zombies in professional dialogue). The image above is not complete, and in all honesty, my bugout bag is fairly similar to theirs (I opt for letter-size loose paper on a clipboard rather than the whiteboard, personally), but here’s the what and the why of some core components to my at-work everyday carry.
iPad in a lightweight stand case. I’m constantly surprised by the sheer breadth of patients that respond to activities on the iPad in a way that they don’t to other stimuli. Lightweight is key for EDC, which is why you don’t see an Otterbox around that beast. I almost never use the stand function for personal use, but the vast majority of my patients prefer it.
Extra gloves. You never know when you’ll walk into a room and they won’t be stocked. If you’ve got the wherewithall to carry snacks, you should be carrying gloves, too. Especially if you’ve got oversized man-hands like I do. Even if you’re not planning on dysphagia treatment with a given patient, you never know when you’re going to have some impromptu positioning or transferring due to impulsivity.
Watch with a second hand. Nothing worse than having to crane your neck to see the room clock to time your generative naming, or to make sure you’re out of the room in time to actually see your whole caseload. In true EDC fashion, the timepiece pictured is a stainless steel certified pro diver with automatic Japanese movement.
Mechanical pencil. No need to sharpen, and patients love the implication that it’s okay to make mistakes.
Non-gel-based black ballpoint click pen. Those orders aren’t going to write themselves. And there’s nothing worse than losing a cap.
iPhone 6 (in airplane mode to keep the bosses happy). In addition to helping me keep my step count accurate while I’m crawling the halls finding patients I won’t have to rouse myself, it’s the best pen light I’ve ever used. Add in Time Timer, dB Meter, Taptronome, and Big Words (the equivalent of a white board for those of us who thumb-type faster and infinitely more legibly than we write), and you’ve got an excellent therapy companion that’s still usable even when you’ve got the iPad out.
Not pictured are some copies of the MoCA and MASA scoring sheets (kept under the blank sheets on the aforementioned clipboard), stethoscope, and pulse-ox for eval-heavy days.
I’ve shown you mine, what your #SLPEDC?
