Helping modernday heroes
Name: Turid Peters
Job: Speech language therapist (specialising in paediatric feeding and dysphagia)
QWhat jobs did you do before this one? I have worked in speech and language therapy (SLT) since I graduated from university. Prior to working at Dunstan Hospital for the Child Development Service, I worked at Starship Children’s Health in Auckland.
QWhy did you choose this job? When our family moved from Auckland to Wanaka, I really wanted to continue working with children with high health needs and disability. The Child Development Service at Dunstan provides this service in a community setting, which is a challenging and rewarding environment to work in. The service is managed by some extremely innovative and resourceful managers and the team members I get to work with are exceptional, as well as great fun.
I chose to work in speech therapy because it seemed like an area of work where you get to problem solve and create options for people who may struggle to communicate in order to connect with others. Connecting with others has always seemed to me one of the most important skills people have.
QHow did you get into it and when? I chose to do SLT after I left school — I went to the University of Canterbury. I have been a speech therapist for over 20 years.
QWhat qualifications and training do you need? You need either a bachelor of speech and language therapy (a fouryear degree) or a master’s degree in speech and language therapy, a twoyear degree after completing an undergraduate degree.
QWhat personal skills do you need? You need empathy, patience and perseverance. You need the skills of a foreign diplomat when negotiating with kids, you need a sense of humour, good problemsolving skills, the ability to relate to a wide
range of people and the ability to advocate for others.
QAny physical requirements? I need to be able to get down on the floor to play with kids — getting up seems to be getting harder and harder!
QAre there any particular health and safety issues? Of course, there are those associated with working with people who may not be well, or the usual risks associated with working with kids — mucous, vomit and other fluids you would possibly prefer not to come in contact with!
QWhat do you do on a daily basis? Every day is different, even the location — one day Queenstown, the next Alexandra. I might be working in a clinic, in a preschool or at a child’s home.
QWhat specialty areas are involved in your work? In my current job, areas of specialty are feeding and swallowing — working at Starship enabled me to build skills in this area to be able to assess kids at risk of having swallowing difficulties.
QWhat is the best thing about your job? I always get an amazing adrenaline rush when kids say something or do something they haven’t been able to do before. It’s like being present at loads of kids’ first words or first steps, except often these kids have had to work so hard to be able to do this — their muscles don’t always do what they want them to do, or they work so hard just to breathe that to do anything else is extraordinary. To hear a child say ‘‘Mum’’ after months of being mute following brain surgery is incredible.
QWhat is the most interesting thing you’ve ever done in your job? Every day and every patient is interesting, but for me watching some of the surgeries, both brain surgery and throat surgery, has been amazing.
QHow has the job changed since you started? The variety of work speech and language therapists do. We now have SLTs working in courts and in prisons with youth offenders. We do a lot of work with people who have swallowing difficulties, both adults, perhaps after injury or stroke, as well as kids with respiratory, cardiac or neurological issues that place them at risk for swallowing and eating difficulties. In the five years I have worked at Central Otago Health Services Ltd (Dunstan Hospital), the number and complexity of kids we are seeing has increased exponentially. This is in keeping with the population growth of this area.
QWhat’s something people generally don’t know about the job? The variety of things we do. Often people associate speech and language therapy with kids who have difficulty saying sound correctly, or stuttering, but the range of stuff we do is enormous and crosses the lifespan, from working with premature babies who can’t swallow to adults with dementia and a whole heap of different stuff in between. It is a profession that studies the way the brain works to communicate.
QWhat are the highs of the job? An enormous high is having the chance to meet parents that are truly exceptional and worthy of great accolades. To me, meeting these parents is better than meeting movie stars or famous athletes or politicians. These parents achieve amazing things for their kids under the most challenging of situations. They are our modernday heroes.
QWhat are the lows of the job? Just as it is a high meeting some of the amazing parents and children, it is also hard watching the struggles some families go through. Funding will never be enough to create the ideal and this can be a low. However, working for motivated managers and a very supportive board which creates opportunities is a high that comes from this low.
QWhat’s the strangest thing you’ve had to do? I worked as a locum in the UK, and one day I got called over the intercom to attend to a patient on a ward: I felt like the main character in ER. Rushing to the ward, I was greeted by a number of worried faces talking about a patient who had suffered a stroke. He was unable to talk but had written ‘‘gun’’ on a piece of paper. There was great concern over what this could mean. I was able in a seemingly magical way to say he wants a Guinness. He was elated and the crowds were amazed. (I had read the patient notes and seen his family had reported he was fond of Guinness.) I think to this day those doctors thought I had magical speech therapy powers.
QWhat is the salary range for the job? $45,000 to $90,000, depending on a number of factors.
QWhat would you say to people considering speech therapy and related fields as a career?
It will never make you a millionaire, but you will have a million amazing moments and experiences. And you will work with families and colleagues who are truly remarkable.
QWhere will you be 20 years from now? Probably stuck on the floor in the clinic at the Child Development Service, unable to get up after getting down on the floor to play with a child!