Preface

At the beginning of the semester, I was confronted with the task of choosing a topic for my MRP (multi-genre research project). At first, I had no idea what I would choose. Many areas of speech pathology interested me. So, I began to think about what I enjoyed the most, and I realized that my favorite topic was neurological disorders. I first wanted to do my research on Wernicke’s aphasia, but then I decided to go the lesser traveled route for me… researching a topic that I knew very little about! That’s when I decided to choose dysphagia as my topic.

From the moment I heard that speech pathologists worked with swallowing disorders, I was interested in them. Dysphagia is such a different disorder to work with compared to the other things that speech pathologists generally deal with. Swallowing is something that is so natural and easy for most of us, that we never think about something happening to disrupt that natural process. Dysphagia can affect anyone at any age, and that can be scary. I began to think about how I would feel if I was diagnosed with a swallowing disorder, and I put my feelings into the client that I created for this project. This was hard at times, but it provided me with a lot of insight into my own thoughts and emotions about this disorder, and I think that is when I really became involved in it. Dysphagia became personal to me, and I think it was an experience that I could only have had by creating this project.

Choosing my specific research question was probably one of the hardest things I had to do this semester. Initially, my question dealt more with the emotional aspects of dysphagia than anything else. I later omitted that part of my question because I realized that I could not possibly address this disorder from a real person’s point of view without getting a strong sense of the emotions, so I did not feel like I had to include that in my question. I eventually was able to reach my final question, “In what ways can speech-language pathologists (SLPs) provide effective treatment for moderate to severe dysphagia?” I chose this question because I would be able to discuss treatment, which was my true interest, but also still be able to show the emotions behind the disorder. In discussing the treatment process, I knew I would be able to put real feelings into what goes on. My other reason for this question was that many times when someone is diagnosed with a disorder, they are scared and just want to know what is going to happen. They want to feel like they are not alone. My genres were created in the hopes that someone would be able to see what goes on in therapy, what are some of their options, and also be able to know that what they are feeling is not unusual. It’s okay and even normal to be afraid, angry, and confused. If anyone gets anything out of my project, I want it to be that there is help out there, and hopefully they can find some common ground with my fictional clients, and possibly feel like they are not alone.

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This page was created by Kristen Sirk, a student at Marshall University, as a requirement for CD 315.

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