Pryor Lends Expertise and Training in Laos and Vietnam

Jan Pryor, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist in our UW Oto Montlake clinic. She is also, among other things, on the board of the National Foundation of Swallowing Disorders, and she volunteers for Resource Exchange International, an NGO which sends people to countries for short-term training of medical personnel in various areas of medicine. She was recently recruited to go to Laos to train doctors and nurses how to assess and treat people with dysphagia (swallowing disorders). She delivered a two-day conference at Mittaphab Hospital. The hospital has just started a new stroke program, but many of the stroke patients die of aspiration pneumonia or suffer from dehydration and malnutrition related to dysphagia. This was their first training in dysphagia.