Penny Welch-West

Penny Welch-West works as a medical speech-language pathologist in a hospital setting with patients who are medically complex. She sees patients and families with a wide range of communication, cognitive-communication, and swallowing challenges. She provides SLP services for patients following concussion and moderate to severe brain injury, in addition to seeing other patient populations in her clinical practice.

Penny is part of an interdisciplinary team and believes the synergy within these teams translates to the best patient outcomes.

Penny has presented and advocated on many topics, from concussion and brain injury to ways to energize clinical practice, implement best practice guidelines (stroke and traumatic brain injury), and engage patients through innovative group therapy approaches in swallowing, augmentative communication, and return to school following brain injury.

As faculty with The University of Western Ontario (UWO), Penny is a lecturer in courses for augmentative and alternative communication, acquired language disorders, and traumatic brain injury. She enjoys supervising student clinical placements for Western University and participating in research projects with Western and McMaster Universities. Penny participates in provincial guidelines for concussion care at Brain Injury Guidelines as well as best-practice guidelines for stroke (Evidenced-Based Review of Stroke Rehabilitation) and moderate to severe brain injury (Evidenced-Based Review of Moderate to Severe Acquired Brain Injury). Her most recent publications are international cognition papers led by an interdisciplinary team of professionals across the globe.