Kaitlin Hanley works as a speech-language pathologist in acute care and Rehabilitation at NYU Langone Medical Center and Christina Marino is an occupational therapist who works on that same unit. Kaitlin has cross-covered acute care and acute rehabilitation for her entire career with a focus on functional therapy for enabling patients to return to the community as it pertains to cognitive, speech, and language therapy. She completed her graduate work in Speech Language Pathology at MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. Christina has worked in a variety of settings, including Rusk and the Tisch Hospital acute care service at NYU Langone. Along with treating cardiopulmonary patients with cognitive deficits, another specialty includes working with limb loss patients. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees are from the University of Scranton.
In this interview, Kaitlin and Christina discuss the kinds of patients they treat and problems regarding how cognitive impairments affect cardiopulmonary patients; occupational therapy and speech-language pathology tools available to arrive at an accurate diagnosis; factors involved in making a determination of which types of interventions would be most appropriate for patients who may differ by age, frailty, and extent of their problems; activities that are aimed at preventing a recurrence of problems; and areas where further research might provide guidance for making additional improvements in patient care.
