Speech Therapy Director Measures Progress in Small Doses

Susan Buin assists adult patient, Dion
Alston, with his manual communications
board.

Susan Buin recently celebrated her 25th year on the staff of the Matheny Medical and Educational Center. She started as a speech-language pathologist in 1982 and was promoted to director of speech therapy in 2001. What has kept her in one place for a quarter-of-a-century? “The caring environment, the people that work here and the ability to see the patients progress over time,” she replies. The latter point is particularly important to her. “That’s a nice thing we have that a lot of other institutions, such as acute care hospitals, don’t. Their patients there are in and out so quickly.”

Buin remembers a specific patient, who came to Matheny, “when she was very young. She was non-verbal, and progress was very slow in the beginning. We developed a manual communications board for her, a very simple board. The she advanced to using an electronic communications system. She learned to drive a power wheelchair and began using a more high tech electronic device. When she was finally able to do all this, it was very, very exciting.” This patient, Buin points out, eventually moved out of Matheny into a community residence in order to be closer to her family, “and I hear she’s doing really well.” Even if progress is slow, Buin explains, “you’re still working toward whatever the patient can give you.”

Today, Buin says, Matheny has many patients with feeding problems, and speech-language pathologists have gotten more involved with feeding and swallowing and helping patients upgrade their diets and advance their eating skills. Her staff, she says, is part of an interdisciplinary team, whose goal is to integrate speech – as well as other therapies – into the classroom of Matheny’s special education school as much as possible.

Buin, who lives in Hackettstown, received her BS and MA in speech-language pathology from Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey). She worked as a speech-language pathologist for the New Jersey Department of Developmental Disabilities before joining Matheny.

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