Application of Teletherapy in Speech Therapy

Abstract

Pandemic and lockdown have had a big impact on all segments of life, including the provision of health services. Although digital (telemedicine) technologies have been applied in the field of medicine for some time now, telerehabilitation in the field of speech and language pathology has mainly been associated with the provision of services in the US and Australia. In addition to the pandemic, the population of Croatia was also faced with the consequences of two devastating earthquakes during 2020, which further resulted in the need for rapid implementation of digital technologies in the process of rehabilitation and education. Research conducted by Dhawan (2020) states that the benefits of distance learning and rehabilitation systems are great flexibility of place and time of learning and rehabilitation, while the challenges are technical difficulties, inability to manage time effectively, distraction, and frustration caused by environmental factors. During 2020 the number of scientific researches aimed at the success of the provision of telerehabilitation has increased significantly as well as an assessment of the attitudes of telerehabilitation service providers (SLTs) and users (patients, parents, caregivers). The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the research on distance rehabilitation, especially in dealing with children with language-speech disorders and hearing impairment, as well as the results of its evaluation by the provider and users of telerehabilitation users. The analysis of the data supports the usage of teletherapy, i.e. distance rehabilitation has yielded very good results. Feedback from teletherapy service providers and users enables better structuring of current programs, didactic content, and methodical approaches in SLTs work to preserve a continuous, valid and timely speech and language service.