Apps to Learn & Practice Talking About Pain, Illness, & Injury

We were looking over the great hospital resources from Patient Provider Communication Forum, Central Coast Children’s Foundation, Dr. Bronwyn Hemsley, and Widgit Software that Carole wrote about and realized that not everyone automatically knows how to talk about pain, illness and injury. We often need to teach the expression of these concepts. We use various types of modeling and create Boxes or Drawers that have items (i.e., bandaids, antiseptic, washcloth, ice buddy, etc) to ‘help with Cuts/Scrapes’ (or any other illness).   We have had some fun and lots of practice using these apps to also help the learning process.

5 Apps To Learn and Practice Talking About Pain, Illness, & Injury

Don’t forget to model, play, and use the apps often in the teaching process so when they are really needed you will see spontaneous communication and language.

Toca Doctor– learning about injury and sickness through fun noncompetitive challenges that involve ‘healing’ the damaged part. Relate the body part challenge to real times of distress.

Autism Xpress–learning about feelings (good variety- i.e., happy, sneezy, sleepy, sickly, etc.)

Autism 5 Point Scale EP– Customizable 5 point Scale that can be used to talk about levels of pain, stress, etc. Can model by labeling when learner/facilitator is in physical discomfort, pain, or illness.

Small Talk Pain– Can be used to teach labeling of specific severity, type, and location of pain.

Small Talk ICU- Can be used to teach talking about various comfort items, sickness, and level of pain.

We would love to hear about what you use and we will continue to talk about other teaching/learning strategies we use as we think these are very important concepts to begin teaching early and frequently.