#IamMGH - Meet Lorraine Zandi-Wong

#IamMGH tells the stories of our people. In honour of Speech and Hearing Awareness Month, meet Lorraine Zandi-Wong, speech language pathologist at Michael Garron Hospital (MGH). 

“I’ve been working at Michael Garron since 2012. The best way I like to explain our role as a speech language pathologist is we look at communication and swallowing. If you think about it, all the muscles you use to speak and eat are the same ones. Our role is looking at someone’s ability to communicate—getting the ideas out, understanding information, formulating the words, thinking about the words, all the skills required for that—and work to understand the muscles involved.

Also, in the hospital, patients can experience difficulties with eating and drinking. As you can imagine, if a patient experiences illness or an acute injury where our ability to eat or speak is affected, it can really affect their abilities to express themselves and understand others. These are really the cornerstones of our social activities. We eat, we drink and we partake in social interactions with our friends and family.

What inspired me to learn about speech language pathology was my experience as a second language speaker, along with experiencing a family member who had lost their ability to speak and swallow. As a result, that really exposed me to the challenges of not being able to communicate your needs when there’s not only a communication barrier, but a language barrier as well.

I grew up in the GTA and I went to school in the GTA so I do appreciate the fact that I can give back to the community in some capacity as a speech pathologist. I did my training and placements around the GTA so I was lucky enough to also work in the community as well. My role at MGH is only my second job but I’ve been here since 2012, so there’s a reason why I’m still here.

A rewarding part of my role is definitely being able to provide a communication strategy to a patient to help them express messages to their loved ones. Being able to facilitate that connection via communication support and therapy strategies is something I value. I’m also a big foodie and love to eat, so helping someone enjoy their food again is very rewarding to me.

Working at MGH for me really is about that community feel. It’s nice to walk down the hall and say hi to people; it doesn’t matter what role you’re in, there isn’t necessarily a hierarchy. Even now, after working at Michael Garron for so many years, I can walk down the hall and say hi to someone and catch up and learn a little about them and their family. You can really engage and get to know someone socially.

As an SLP, my role is to be a connection builder. Sometimes, when our connections are broken, we help build the ability to connect again to understand others, connect the ability to express ourselves, use language to problem-solve, and build the connection to enjoy food safely again.”