leaving nursing to become a speech therapist

inspec · Jul 17, 2010

I am thing of doing the same but what are your reasons?

clairecruz · Apr 15, 2014

Hi! I'm thinking of becoming a speech pathologist also.

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Apr 15, 2014

My sister left teaching to become an SLP and couldn't be happier. She finds she is doing more "good" and making more of a difference as a pediatric SLP than she ever did as an elementary inclusion/special ed teacher. Right now she is working with brain injured (traumatic or acquired (tumor, stroke, etc) children regain feeding & language skills.

elkpark · Apr 15, 2014

I haven't known anyone who's done this, but I will say that all the SLPs I have known over the years seemed a lot happier being SLPs than most of the nurses I've known have been happy about being nurses ...

ceccia · Apr 19, 2014

good plan as long as you're not planning on ever working for the public school system. the bad news is that this is where over half of the jobs are. The good news is, there are other possibilities - adult practice settings (SNF, SAR, hospital-based), as well as home health and private peds clinics.

(public school SLP: ridiculously low pay - in many states SLPs are paid on the same scale as teachers, which obviously isn't very good, no limit to the amount of students admins will dump on your caseload, being guilt-tripped into picking up students who don't actually need speech therapy or have language deficits because the school gets additional $$$ for every kid who gets special services, IEP meetings for the 50-60 kids on your caseload means working till midnight at home preparing IEP reports at home for no extra pay and attending IEP meetings-again for no extra pay...)

source: my cousin and several of my co-workers are SLPs with school-based experience.