Communication: Adapting to Changing Times and Needs

At a recent meeting, a speaker related her experiences recovering from a head injury. Her relatively minor fall had led to a form of aphasia serious enough to make basic communication difficult. Her work and family life were forever altered. Although the objective of the talk was to provide that all-important “patient perspective”, I began to reflect on all my years of practice, primarily with neurology patients. How many times had I witnessed similar scenarios in which someone’s life had been profoundly affected because an injury had left them with an inability to understand or express language