Job description: Speech therapist
Company: None. I am a freelance speech therapist working for an orthodontic practice. I have also worked as an employed speech therapist and research assistant at the Clinical Department for Phoniatrics and Speech Therapy at the Department of Ear, Nose and Throat Diseases at the Medical University of Vienna.
I work in: Vienna, Austria
I’ve worked here since: October 2010
My contact
What I do:
- Diagnostics and treatment for children and adults
- Involvement in clinical studies and scientific projects
- Involvement in organising conferences and seminars
Why I love my job:
- Wide range of people, disorders, treatment options and tasks
- Independent working
- Seeing the joy and gratitude of the patients when they reach their treatment goals
What I don’t like so much about my job
- The unreliability of a few patients
- The often low status often associated with speech therapy
- The lack of Master’s courses for speech therapists in Austria
Important skills in my job:
- For the treatment: empathy, patience and an enjoyment of working with people
- For research: an interest in new things and critical thinking
- Team skills
My biggest accomplishment so far:
During my work as a research assistant at the Medical University of Vienna, I had several opportunities to give presentations at scientific congresses and conferences. It is fun to intensively research, investigate and critically evaluate particular topics and finally share this specific knowledge with others.
How I found my current job:
The head of our course kept us informed about any vacancies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, especially during our last year at FH JOANNEUM. So I submitted my application, attended the interview and was lucky!
What I learned for this job during my studies:
Keyword internship: during the course, we had to complete lots of different vocational internships and gained a taste of lots of different areas of speech therapy. Since we were free to choose our own internship positions, we were able to focus on our interests during our course and thereby map out our professional career path.
Job prospects in my field:
I would rate our job prospects and opportunities as excellent. Fortunately, the field of speech therapy is very broad and so there is something for everyone.
I am:
- open-minded
- creative
- a ‘lover of life’
About my job:
I love the tasks involved in my job. I like going to work. I meet new and interesting people every day. I have some great colleagues. I think it’s fantastic to be able to attend regular conferences and training sessions and to learn new things. My job can be worked around a family and children. You will never earn millions as a speech therapist and you are unlikely to become a Hollywood star… but who needs that anyway?
I am currently studying:
… for a Master’s in General Linguistics – Grammar Theory and Cognitive Linguistics with the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Vienna.
I continued my studies because:
… I needed to learn something new again after a time working in the professional world. It was important to me to explore speech therapy from a different angle and this finally led me to linguistics. Being new to the working world, I also did not yet have the money I needed to afford a Master’s course at one of the many private universities. My Bachelor’s course in Logopedics was taken into account and so I was able to start the Master’s course directly.
How I made studying compatible with my job:
The biggest advantage I had was that my workplace at the time, the Medical University of Vienna, was virtually a direct neighbour of the Institute of Linguistics. The challenge was more to work the lectures and seminars around my hours of work or to integrate them into my holidays to ensure that neither my job nor my studies would suffer.
