A screenshot of a telepractice session as two grad student clinicians work with an 8-year old patient (Courtesy of Megann McGill).
Megann McGill was doing tele-health before it was cool. Since 2017 — long before virtual appointments and therapy became popular during COVID-19 — the Portland State speech and hearing sciences professor and a rotating team of graduate students have been treating patients for stuttering over Zoom. On any given week, more than a dozen patients connect via tablets, laptops and phones from across Oregon — with nearly a dozen more on a waiting list.
If it wasn't for the virtual clinic, one mom shared, her 11-year-old daughter would not be going to speech therapy.
"There's too much other stuff going on in our family life," she said. "There's absolutely no way that I could drive her to a therapist's office and sit there for an hour. It's only because of telepractice that we can make it work."
That's exactly what McGill hoped to provide when she switched to a fully remote clinic — offering stuttering assessment and treatment to families who otherwise wouldn't have access to speech therapy because of cost, distance or any number of reasons. The telepractice clinic is made possible with funding from the Oregon Scottish Rite, whose primary charity partners with clinics at PSU and University of Oregon to serve more than 3,000 children with communication disorders every year. Patients don't pay a dime for services.
"The whole purpose of my research is to really explore how we can bridge these health disparities between rural and urban areas to provide the absolute best services possible across our state regardless of geographic location," said McGill, an assistant professor and speech-language pathologist. "Telepractice has been one way to provide specialty care in rural areas."
McGill's clinic treats patients as young as 4 and as old as 70. They Zoom in from towns across the state, including Grants Pass, Medford, Estacada, Hillsboro, Forest Grove, Oregon City, Hood River, Coos Bay and Portland. Some receive treatment for a 10-week term; others for a year, even two. There's no cure for stuttering, but individual and group sessions equip them with tools and techniques to support their communication and help them work toward an attitude of acceptance.
"Our goal is not to keep folks who stutter in therapy for their whole lives," McGill said. "The idea is that they become their own clinician in terms of using the tools we teach so they say what they want, when they want, however they want without fear or hesitation."
She said telepractice gives them the flexibility to add family members and friends to the video sessions. Kids can have their parents Zoom in from work, or invite grandparents and best friends to tune in for their end-of-term presentations.
"We have this awesome collaborative opportunity with our patients and their families to bring everybody into the same space," McGill said.
Of course, telepractice isn't for everyone — the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association estimates that about 15% of a speech-language pathologist's caseload may not be appropriate for telepractice — but for the vast majority of patients, it's a viable option. And for some, it may be their only option.
"The clinic is a godsend for us, it really is," one parent shared.