| Challenges amid the pandemic (Current limitations) | Opportunities to improve care of aphasia (Future directions) |
1. Overall emotional distress in PWA | ・ PWA have experienced various levels of emotional distress about COVID-19 and its impact on them, their loved ones, and their communities | ・ To conduct more research investigations to examine the short- and long-term effects of COVID-19 on PWA’s psychosocial well-being (Kong, 2021) ・ To review and expand existing phone or online outreach programs or “check-in” services (e.g., Ryan, 2020) to supplement regular aphasia therapy |
2. Telepractice for PWA | ・ Telehealth for PWA has been around for years but has not been the most popular option (Kurland, Liu, & Stokes, 2018) ・ Some PWA might not be able to transition to teletherapy amid COVID due to digital inequality (Menger, Morris, & Salis, 2016) | ・ To continue to advocate and promote the application of telepractice, with reference to the COVID-related public health guidance and telehealth policy changes ・ To explore application of online programs that treat and prevent stress-related disorders in PWA (e.g., Weiner et al., 2020) ・ To monitor the sudden and unexpected growth of telepractice during COVID, which may evolve and prompt a new trend of remote or virtual PWA care in the future |
3. Use of technology | ・ COVID-19 prompted more PWA to turn to mobile applications and online resources for conducting home-based practice ・ Available “Aphasia apps” are still limited (Vaezipour, Campbell, Theodoros, & Russell, 2020) and predominantly available in English (National Aphasia Association, 2015) | ・ To explore the use and effectiveness of digital tools (e.g., evidence-based websites, smartphone applications, or conversational agents) by PWA to ameliorate psychological symptoms (Zhang & Smith, 2020) ・ To develop more aphasia-specific applications in the future (Vaezipour, Campbell, Theodoros, & Russell, 2020) ・ To develop new and to further refine existing mobile health applications ・ To monitor the clinical use of some new initiatives on family-mediated digital aphasia training |
4. Accessible information about COVID-19 | ・ On average, most current government/official materials with information about COVID-19 are too complex for many readers (Hirsch, 2020) ・ PWA had limited access to comprehensible and reliable health information about COVID-19 ・ PWA need communicatively accessible (i.e., aphasia friendly; Rose, Worrall, Hickson, & Hoffmann, 2011) written health information about COVID-19 | ・ To improve and empower PWA to obtain, read, understand, and use information to make appropriate health decisions (i.e., health literacy; National Institutes of Health, 2021) |
5. Family support | ・ Caregivers of PWA assumed multiple important roles in the rehabilitative process and were overwhelmed (Shafer, Shafer, & Haley, 2019) | ・ To examine and gain a better understanding of psychological trauma caused by COVID-19 among caregivers of PWA (Sun et al., 2020; Xiang et al., 2020) |
6. PWA receiving training at home | ・ Home-based intervention was relatively less common (or unavailable) in the pre-COVID era | ・ To increase use of virtual clinical visits conducted from PWA’s home, given the convenience to receive therapy (which is also an incentive that PWA continue with teletherapy; Chiu, 2020) ・ To examine if and how PWA respond differently to home-based therapy, as PWA feel less intimidated in a familiar environment |