Meet MSKTC Ambassador Tracie Bearden
- Tracie Bearden
Tracie lives in Colorado and enjoys being outdoors in nature. She loves activities including paddleboarding and hiking, especially if she can bring her two dogs Lulu and Walter. Tracie is ambidextrous and is known for her witty personality and “refreshing candor” as a doctor once told her. In 2023, Tracie started a small non-profit organization in Denver, Colorado called TBI MedSLP. TBI MedSLP is committed to providing high quality education and resources to medical speech therapists, providers, people with TBI, and the general public.
Tracie’s Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Journey
Tracie is a Speech Therapist (MS, CCC-SLP, CBIST), non-profit founder, and person with TBI. She has worked as a medical speech therapist with the brain injury population for over fourteen years. In 2018, Tracie sustained a TBI impacting her optic nerve as a result of a traumatic physical experience.
Tracie is passionate about providing high quality care and education to her patients. She believes her experience as a patient informs her care as a provider. Through all her personal and professional experience, Tracie believes the best way to approach a TBI is one day at a time. She believes that it is critical that TBI patients have access to high quality, easy-to-understand resources like those provided by MSKTC.
Tracie has been a Certified Brain Injury Specialist Trainer since 2020 and a Certified Brain Injury Specialist since 2018. She has led and facilitated in-person and virtual TBI survivor and caregiver support groups. Through her organization, TBI MedSLP, Tracie has been able to connect brain injury survivors to resources and speech therapists to quality, brain injury practice education. Tracie has written multiple articles on TBI, interviewed on podcasts, and presented for state speech language and hearing associations on this topic.
What does Tracie think of the quality, usefulness, and user-friendliness of the MSKTC resources?
Tracie has been using MSKTC resources for over a year with her patients and people with TBI. She uses these resources because they cover a variety of challenges that people with TBI often face and come in a variety of formats to best fit the learning level of the patient, family, or caregiver.
These resources have helped improve insight for some of Tracie’s patients because of the quality of information and the simplicity of how the information is presented. These resources are wonderful for support groups to use during groups to discuss different topics and to provide attendees with to further enhance their understanding of the TBI journey.
Why does Tracie want to be a MSKTC ambassador?
Tracie’s passion for traumatic brain injury is not only professional, but personal. Having sat on the other side of the table as the patient, Tracie understands what patients need to hear and understand on their journey. She can confidently recommend and use educational resources provided by MSKTC to ensure the people she helps are getting what they need.
What has Tracie done as a MSKTC ambassador?
Tracie believes in high quality, comprehensible brain injury education for her patients and the public. She provides MSKTC resources specific to what each of her patient’s needs during their sessions and when discharged. Tracie uses MSKTC resources because they are comprehensive and easy to understand for patients and caregivers. MSKTC offering Spanish translated resources has also elevated Tracie’s ability to educate patients in her area.