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Peggy Reisher’s Experience with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Peggy attained her master’s in social work in Nebraska but began her work with individuals with brain injury while living in Indianapolis, IN after graduate school. When Peggy moved back to NE, Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital hired her to serve as the social worker in their brain injury unit. There, she spent the next 14 years helping patients and their families find support and services as they prepared to discharge from the rehabilitation unit.

In 2009, the Nebraska Dept. of Education used HRSA funds to support the development of a new non-profit which became BIA-NE, an organization aimed at helping individuals with brain injuries rebuild their lives, restore purposeful living, and rebuild hope and optimism beyond the hospital walls. Initially, Peggy was the program director for BIA-NE and took over as the executive director in 2013.

For the first eleven years, BIA-NE only had funding for two to three full-time staff and a contract worker. A milestone was met in 2019 when, after Peggy and fellow advocates had been lobbying for ten years, the “Brain Injury Trust Fund” legislation was passed, providing financing for TBI support, and expanding the staff to eight. This dramatically improved the support that BIA-NE could provide for the TBI community.

In 2019 Peggy was asked to be on the board of the United States Brain Injury Alliance (USBIA), only to then end up chairing the board.

Today, Peggy strives to broaden the support given to individuals with brain injury across the state. She does this by building systems capacity. Areas of focus for Peggy and her team are those individuals who are at higher-risk of having a brain injury. That includes justice-involved individuals, victims of domestic violence, veterans, and the aging population. Peggy and her team offer brain injury training to community-based programs, encouraging programs to screen their clients for brain injury. Once they identify those who screen positive, they ask those programs to refer those individuals to their brain injury resource facilitators which they have across the state.

What does Peggy Reisher think of the quality, usefulness, and user-friendliness of the MSKTC resources?

The MSKTC resources fill the void that has existed for those looking for the best knowledge of how to deal with the symptoms of their TBI. Small organizations don’t have the means to create the content needed to best educate people within the TBI community, but thanks to MSKTC, they don’t need to. As Peggy’s organizations track information in their database, the consistent issue raised with people with TBI is a struggle to find the information they need. Fortunately, Peggy finds that she is regularly able to find the resources needed through the MSKTC website. The factsheets are such a powerful tool, and the continued translation of resources into Spanish is invaluable. Even the info-comics serve a huge role for those users who are not the strongest readers.

Why does Peggy Reisher want to be an MSKTC ambassador?

Peggy feels like she has already been playing the role of an ambassador, with how often she proselytizes MSKTC resources. Signing up with MSKTC and making it official only made sense.

What has Peggy Reisher done as an MSKTC ambassador?

In her efforts to improve the quality of knowledge, Peggy always follows up her presentation with linking to the relevant MSKTC resources. Considering she performs anywhere from 30-50 presentations annually, there are plenty of opportunities where she can platform MSKTC. In her communities, Peggy notes regular occurrences of people continuing to share MSKTC resources after she has introduced them to the site. Within BIA-NE her staff regularly share relevant resources with clients and the community at large, and Peggy will even share links via email or Zoom when they are relevant to the recipient’s needs.

Megan’s Burn Injury Journey

While Megan has experience working in burn units, she feels her journey with burn injury (BI) truly started when she cared for a patient with over 44% total body surface area, with 3rd-degree burns to his face. His injury took his vision, and he needed multiple facial skin grafts and flaps, all of which severely impacted his ability to speak and swallow. This patient showed Megan how crucial the Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) role is to the BI population and how often their services may be overlooked for treatment and recovery. She began to better collaborate with her Physical/Occupational Therapists, attended burn unit rounds, and read about burns off the clock to maximize the care she could provide. Through her work, Megan developed a passion to help not only patients but help lead the SLP field of research and advocacy for the burn injury population.

Why does Megan think people should consider referring to the MSKTC resources?

Given her high involvement with patients with TBI, SCI, and Burn Injury, Megan finds the plethora of MSKTC’s resources to be directly relevant and beneficial for her patients. This user-friendly, free, research-based information is helpful for patients from all different backgrounds and is so easily accessible. She also loves how they have options for English and Spanish ready at the click of a button. Megan shares these resources with patients, families, and colleagues to better promote advocacy, healing, and care for her patients.

Why does Megan want to be an MSKTC ambassador?

Megan would like to be an MSKTC ambassador to promote available resources, improve patient care, improve patients’ confidence in returning home after the acute care journey has ended, and promote the role of the SLP in this patient population. She would also like to continue expanding her knowledge of burn injuries to best treat burn survivors and understand their medical complexities both in the acute stages and beyond.

What has Megan done as an MSKTC ambassador?

Megan has provided suggestions to MSKTC on how to further improve handouts and resources involving orofacial burns and stretching. She provides MSKTC resources to patients, shares handouts with coworkers, and works to increase awareness of all that MSKTC has to offer regarding burn injury, TBI, and SCI. She is currently working on ways to help advocate for the SLP role in burn care and feels as though these resources are helpful to patients and help her improve her knowledge and insight into the burn survivor’s journey through care and beyond.