Rachel G., CCC-SLP

About Rachel

Rachel G. chose acute care dysphagia work because she wanted to be where the stakes were highest — where a swallowing evaluation genuinely changed what happened to a patient that day, not in six weeks. She didn't want to work in schools. She didn't want to do voice therapy in an outpatient clinic. She wanted the ICU, the floor, the bedside. And she wanted to travel while doing it.

"People told me that medical SLP travel was limited. That the school market was bigger, more consistent, easier to place. All of that is true. And none of it mattered to me. I wanted acute care, and I figured out how to make it work as a traveler."

Rachel has worked acute care at hospital systems in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Florida over three years of travel. Her background in dysphagia — including instrumental assessment experience with MBSS and FEES — has made her a high-demand traveler in settings where that skill set is rare and actively sought. She knows exactly how to position specialty clinical experience for maximum contract leverage.

How Rachel Mentors

Rachel's mentoring is best suited for SLPs who:

• Want medical settings over schools and aren't sure whether that's realistic as a traveler (it is)
• Have dysphagia or instrumental assessment experience and don't know how to use it strategically
• Are navigating the SLP licensure process for acute care hospital contracts specifically
• Want to understand the pay difference between school-based and medical SLP travel

On Positioning Your Specialty

Rachel is direct about one thing: SLPs with acute care and dysphagia experience should never accept a school-market rate. "Your clinical skill set is different. Your market is different. The hospitals competing for you aren't the same entities that fill school contracts. Make sure your agency understands that distinction — or find one that does."

What Rachel Knows About the Acute Care SLP Market

After three years in medical settings across four states, Rachel has a strong sense of which markets have consistent acute care SLP demand, which hospital systems tend to offer better contract terms, and which agencies genuinely have hospital relationships vs. those that are guessing at the same job boards you could search yourself. She shares this knowledge freely with mentees navigating the same path she did.