Voice Therapy for the Beginning Clinician

Abstract

This article is written specifically for recent graduates of Speech-Language Pathology programs or clinicians with little experience in providing voice therapy for the approximately 88 million people in the United States who will suffer from a voice disorder in their lifetime (Cohen, Kim, Roy, Asche, & Courey, 2012; Roy, Merrill, Gray, & Smith, 2005; United States Census Bureau, n.d.). Voice therapy is a patient-centered treatment paradigm used to modify behaviors that cause and/or contribute to voice disorders. A critical need exists to train novice clinicians to perform voice therapy who may, or may not, have had dedicated training in their academic programs and/or Clinical Fellowship (CF). The article is divided into the following sections: (1) Appropriate Referrals for Voice Therapy, (2). A Voice Therapy Framework, (3) Scientific Rationale for Differing Voice Therapy Techniques, and (4) When to Discharge Patients from Voice Therapy.