Are you passionate about helping children and adults overcome their speech, language and communication problems?
Do you enjoy working with people and creating unique solutions for them?
Then you must be a speech therapist!
Speech pathology is a complex field of work and requires extensive knowledge on the physical, cognitive and social aspect of speech and communication.
And if you have your own private speech therapy practice, you’ve probably attended numerous conferences and seminars, read books and educational materials to further improve your expertise.
And, the learning never stops!
In this article, we’re talking about the 5 best books you can use to enhance your speech therapy business.
Let’s get right to it.
These Books Will Enhance Your Private Speech Therapy Business
1. Assessment in Speech-Language Pathology: A Resource Manual by Kenneth Shipley and Julie McAfee.
If you need to assess a patient’s speech-language pathology, this is the book for you. It contains a large variety of assessment materials, instructions, tools, and procedures, so you can apply your knowledge to your patients.
You can get creative and add your own personal touch to the strategies in the book to personalize them for your clients.
2. Eliciting Sounds: Techniques and Strategies for Clinicians by Wayne A. Secord
If you specialize in treating children and adults with sound pronunciation difficulties, you can make great use of this book.
It contains useful techniques and strategies to help clients with lisps, articulating particular sounds, including the /r/ sound and much more.
It’s a great resource to make your therapy sessions fun and interesting, all the while helping your clients.
3. Terminology of Communication Disorders: Speech-Language-Hearing by Lucille Nicolosi, Elizabeth Harryman, and Janet Kresheck
Terminology of Communication Disorders is actually a glossary book for students and practitioners to refer to in their practice.
All terms related to hearing, speech and language pathology are given in alphabetical order, along with the related terms and synonyms. This is to help you easily find your way in the classification of the terms and disorders.
Although this book is extremely valuable on its own, you could benefit from including additional tools in your practice such as rehab documentation software, digital materials etc.
4. Successful R Therapy by Pam Marshalla
This book is fully dedicated to the /r/ sound and how it’s formed in speech. The author describes in great detail how your mouth, tongue, and lips help pronounce this sound.
It also focuses on the differences between a vocalic R and a consonantal R, along with a back R and a tip R.
Pronouncing the /r/ sound is probably the most problematic in kids, so you can use this book in their private speech therapy practices to treat even the most challenging cases.
5. Evaluating & Enhancing Children’s Phonological Systems by Barbara Hodson
This book is dedicated to phonological problems and disorders in children. It helps speech therapists understand the best practice for dealing with children whose speech is unintelligible.
It uses the Hodson’s Cycles Approach, but you’re free to choose whether to use it or not.
The book outlines many intervention techniques that can help you create better plans and programs to serve and treat your patients.
Final Thoughts
The books on our list are packed with valuable information regarding specific, but also general speech pathology issues.
Though there are numerous materials and books for speech-language pathologists, these are some of the best on the market.
Now, it’s over to you! Do you have a favorite speech pathology book to share? Let us know in the comments below!