Designing Furniture for Pediatric Speech-Language Therapy: A Participatory Design Approach

In the United States, 7.7% of children ages 3-17 have had a disorder related to voice, speech, language, or swallowing in the past 12 months. Moreover, 34% of children ages 3-10 have multiple communication or swallowing disorders. At the same time, of Speech Language Pathologists (SLP), the professionals that provided therapy services for communication and swallowing disorders, 67% provided therapy services in pediatric outpatient clinics. In the pediatric therapy environment, SLPs are exposed to a high risk of developing a musculoskeletal injury and that risk has not been evaluated. The methodology for the present study is based on a Participatory Design (PD) approach; with a total of 20 participants, a new furniture for pediatric therapy was developed and tested. Therefore, the current study is focused on assessing the risk level of SLPs by using a Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA). Based on the results, the new furniture for pediatric therapy was tested by reapplying REBA in order to compare the risk level with the initial assessment. The current risk level for SLPs of developing a musculoskeletal injury ranges from Medium (4-7) to High (8-10). Using the new furniture for pediatric therapy, the risk was lowered between Negligible (1) and Medium (4-7).