Ros Fraser is a Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) Clinical Lead for Older People’s Services and Team Lead for the Home First and Frailty SLT Service in NHS Lothian.
I have recently been appointed as the Speech and Language Therapy Clinical Lead for Older People’s Services in NHS Lothian. This is a new and exciting post, and I look forward to working with as many people as possible to help develop the services we provide to the expanding population of older people in Lothian. I am developing this role alongside my clinical remit as lead of a rapid response team that I have been designing and developing since 2022. We support older people with frailty at home and in care homes with swallowing and communication issues, which are exacerbated by acute illness. Our small team (currently 1.4 FTE) takes referrals from Hospital at Home (H@H), acute hospital teams and GPs.
I volunteered to be a BGS #ChooseGeriatrics Ambassador as I am passionate about AHPs working to raise their profile within older people’s services.
My #ChooseGeriatrics Journey:
I was inspired to work in Geriatrics from my early days as a student. I was fortunate to have several placements working with adults. I think I was given these rarer opportunities simply because I had a car and was able to take myself and a few other student colleagues to hospitals and clinics across Scotland for placements.
In 1997, I took up my first post in Lanarkshire. This was a ‘split post’ and involved working in both adults’ care and paediatrics. I started work on the same day as around 10 other SLT graduates. I happened to mention one day that I (unlike many of my colleagues) enjoyed working with adults. Immediately a flood of requests came in to ask that I ‘swap’ a few adult patients of theirs for my own paediatric patients. Within weeks I was working almost exclusively with a full caseload of adults and the rest is history! I moved to a job in my hometown of Edinburgh in 2001 and I have been working in Lothian ever since. I have now worked as a Speech and Language Therapist in adult services for 28 years, developing my knowledge, skills, and experience across many clinical areas. I have had the privilege to be involved in (and been professionally and personally changed by) the journeys of thousands of people I have worked with and alongside over the years. My career has developed towards specialism in acute care at home for older people presenting with frailty. This has given me the opportunity to collaborate with Speech and Language Therapists across the UK in my role as Chair of the Acute Care at Home/Frailty Clinical Excellence Network, that I set up in 2022, with SLT colleagues working in similar types of service. There remain only a few of us working in this field, within and alongside services such as H@H, but we aim to raise the profile of what SLT can offer to these services and their patients.
I enjoy working in Geriatrics for many reasons:
- I take great satisfaction from observing the impact that even a small piece of advice and support can make in helping a person and their family and/or care team with a swallowing or communication issue.
- I love collaborating with colleagues (from SLT and the wider MDT), sharing knowledge and skills with one another.
- Working in Geriatrics has provided me with many interesting opportunities to help develop and support our services for older people e.g. I was fortunate to be a co-author of the Health Improvement Scotland Ageing and Frailty Standards (2024)
- The variety of the role: I can be seeing patients, working on service development projects, supporting colleagues with complex cases, writing articles, or designing posters. Every day is different, and I have almost full autonomy over what I do.
- I almost always learn something new (professionally or personally) from the older people I meet. I enjoy listening to their stories and, at least sometimes I hope, I entertain them with my own!
I am always happy to chat (I am a Speech and Language Therapist after all!!). I can be contacted at ros.fraser@nhs.scot or @sltros.bsky.social
