Mr. Schmidt is a 62-year-old male that is 13 months post-onset of suffering a stroke. Mr. Schmidt was admitted to Lansing Hospital for a stroke that was characterized by slurred speech and right upper extremity weakness. After being discharged from acute care, Mr. Schmidt spent several weeks at Lansing Inpatient Rehabilitation Center. During these weeks, Mr. Schmidt received intensive physical, occupational and speech therapy. Mr. Schmidt was discharged from the facility 6 months ago. Since this discharge, Mr. Schmidt has only on occasion participated in speech therapy, but it was never consistent.
When he was discharged, it was explained that Mr. Schmidt has moderate expressive language deficits. His auditory and writing comprehension were…show more content… Schmidt because I would like to obtain an aphasia classification. Through the discharge notes, it is evident that Mr. Schmidt exhibits nonfluent aphasia. In particular, I believe that Mr. Schmidt exhibits Broca's aphasia, however, I would like to use this assessment to discover the objective type before I let my subject judgments get in the way. By performing this assessment, I would be able to gain a full diagnostic report to understand Mr. Schmidt's current functional abilities, as well as his strengths and weaknesses. The information provided on his discharge was from 6 months ago, therefore, I would like to gain a full understanding of where his function is currently. The assessment would allow me to make generalizable and measurable goals that are tailored to the patient. Furthermore, I needed an assessment that would assess all the areas of concern that was addressed in the discharge, which this assessment accomplishes through its…show more content… Schmidt is the Assessment for Living with Aphasia (ALA). The ALA was developed to address the need for a communicatively accessible, psychometrically sound, aphasia-related quality of life (QoL) measure (Simmons-Mackie et al., 2014). The assessment is a pictographic, self-report measure that evaluates the outcomes related to the impact of aphasia on the individual's daily life and provides a score that represents how an individual views their life with aphasia. The score and the assessment are based on the Living with Aphasia: Framework for Outcome Measurement (A-FROM) (Simmons-Mackie et al., 2014). A-FROM was adapted from the World Health Organization International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), which is useful for understanding the impact through a variety of levels that serves as the scaffold upon that the ALA was designed (Simmons-Mackie et al., 2014). This framework focuses on the patient's life with aphasia through four areas: participation, the severity of aphasia, environmental factors and personal factors such as personal identify, attitudes and feelings (Chapey, 2008). The assessment evaluates each of the areas by rating, pointing and responding to
