NOVELTY IN LATVIA! Targeted therapy in a multidisciplinary team for the development of children: audio speech therapist and physiotherapist

Multidisciplinary therapy is now available at Bērnu veselības centrs (Children's Health Centre), a branch of Veselības centrs 4, where an audio speech therapist and a physiotherapist work as a united team, thus ensuring the achievement of maximum of the desired therapy results. Both specialists set common targets and harmonise their tasks on the basis of examination results, age of the child, their skills and capacities, and afterwards implement the set objectives at therapy sessions. This type of multidisciplinary therapy is available in Latvia for the first time.

What is a multidisciplinary approach?
It is an approach that includes the promotion of physical and mental health and is aimed at maximising functional capacities. The assessment of rehabilitation options, development of a specific, patient-oriented therapy plan and implementation thereof is performed in co-operation with the patient and their family and with the involvement of several healthcare specialists. The objective of the approach is to optimise therapy process by using technologies recognised in international medical practice (IMP).

Who is it for?
Therapy programmes are adapted to:

• Children with functional/ movement disorders
• Pre-school and school age children with postural disorders
• Pre-school and school age children with multifunctional disorders

1. Imbalance of linguolabial muscles
2. Disrupted breathing stereotype
3. Dysfunction of temporomandibular joint
4. Limitations of chewing, mimic muscles
5. Swallowing disorders
6. Incorrect articulation

• Children with genetic diseases
• Children with psychiatric development disorders or behavioural/attention deficiency disorders
• Children at early phases of development

How is this done?
Multi-professional team consists of two functional specialists – physiotherapist and audio speech therapist. The child arrives for the first visit together with their relatives and, during this visit, complaints are recorded, history data are collected, and initial examination is performed. Functional specialists perform objective examination of the patient during the initial check-up. After the initial consultation, the specialists and the relatives of the child agree on the next visit, during which additional examinations will be performed, if required and the specialists will provide information on the course of the planned therapy. Audio speech therapist and the physiotherapist set common objectives and harmonise their tasks based on examination results, the age and skills of the child.

Why is it efficient?

• Varied knowledge and skills of functional specialists are used at the same time.
• Therapy result oriented decision-making process is faster.
• The total costs of the patient may happen to be lower.
• The team of functional specialists are able to set more extensive functional objectives and integrate them in the life of the customer, instead of every specialist working towards reaching their own goals.
• It is easier for the patients and their families to communicate with a united team, instead of several individual specialists.
• The patient is exposed to lower emotional/psychological tension, if the intervention unifies different disciplines.

The multidisciplinary team includes audio speech therapist Sabīne Mackeviča and physiotherapist Jana Gutkina

The therapy is available at Children's Health Centre, a branch of Veselības centrs 4
Address: Duntes iela 15A, Rīga
Phone: (+371) 67517530, (+371) 29188623