Speech & Language Therapy Department

About

Our speech and language therapists (SLTs) work with patients who have communication, voice and/or swallowing impairments associated with conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain tumour, neurological conditions like Motor Neurone Disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's Disease, as well as head and neck cancer, voice disorders and deafness. 

When working with our patients, our SLTs take into account the medical, physical, psychological, social and cultural factors together with other relevant details that may contribute to the lived experience of disability. The very nature of communication demands that SLTs work in close partnership with our patients and, where appropriate, relatives, close friends, colleagues and others with whom they come into contact. In addition, a central part of our work is to promote and to be actively involved in making Beaumont Hospital accessible for people with communication disability.

Clinical Education of Students 

The department provides clinical placements for speech and language therapy students attending Trinity College Dublin. In addition, students attend the department from other universities within Ireland. Supervising SLTs are responsible for completing the continuous assessment on these students and are members of the examining team for their final clinical examination.

The department is also actively involved in providing supervision of SLTs undergoing post-graduate education in specific areas (e.g. swallowing disorders, ENT head and neck oncology, hearing impairment).

Referrals

While we’ll do all we can to accommodate your needs, our services are only available to patients with a Beaumont Hospital medical chart. We mainly focus on inpatient work, with some limited outpatient services but no on-call service. For details on our outpatient services, you can contact the department. 

You can access our services if:

• You are referred by a multidisciplinary team within the hospital.
• You experience difficulties in communication, speech, language and voice associated with their medical condition or who have difficulties with swallowing.
• You have already used our services, and would like to do so again within one year of your last SLT contact 

Unfortunately, we’re not able to offer our services to children and adults who have a communication impairment associated with a congenital or developmental condition (excluding hearing loss), and adults with fluency disorders.