Feeding & Swallowing

Speech Therapist

Gemma was a recipient of the Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) Health Science Overseas Scholarship in 2008 and subsequently graduated from University of Sydney, Australia with an Honours degree. She then worked in Singapore General Hospital (SGH) for several years where she specialised in the areas of speech, language, cognitive and feeding difficulties.

Gemma was the Team Leader of both the neurology and paediatric feeding teams and worked closely with various healthcare professionals and caregivers to provide holistic care for her clients. She has years of clinical experience in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and High Dependency Wards, evaluating and managing preterm and term babies with bottling difficulties. She also supported many parents in the care of infants and toddlers with difficulties in bottling, weaning, chewing and acceptance of solids.

She has vast experience in treating adults with speech, language and swallowing disorders, particularly with patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, and patients with brain injury resulting from stroke or trauma. In addition, she possesses advanced skills in the management of dysphagia (swallowing difficulty) such as videofluroscopy and tracheostomy.

She is effectively bilingual in English and Mandarin, which allows her to build rapport with patients and families of different backgrounds. She has presented at multiple public forums about dementia and Parkinson’s disease entirely in Mandarin, as well as provided various talks about Parkinson’s and its impact on communication and swallowing to many support groups. She was part of a specialised Parkinson’s multi-disciplinary team in the hospital and the team was involved in research projects that were presented in both local and overseas conferences. The team was also awarded the Centre of Excellence by Parkinson’s Foundation of America.

Gemma believes in improvement and upgrading of skills, knowledge and service delivery. Apart from working on her own learning journey, she implemented ideas to improve processes and thus improve safety and care for patients. She provided various dysphagia training workshops to nurses and other healthcare professionals. She headed a quality improvement project to improve the information-counselling and decision-making process to manage swallow safety for patients. She was awarded the Patient Safety grant for her project and her creation of the electronic module was well-received by the nursing division which was subsequently implemented by SGH.  Gemma implemented the training modules for the Neonatal nurses in the identification of feeding difficulties in pre-term babies and in training them in appropriate bottling methods. She was involved in the information-counselling for parents to improve their speech and language stimulation for their infants and toddlers. Gemma enjoys teaching and has mentored numerous younger speech therapists in the assessment and management of aphasia, apraxia, cognitive impairment, dysphagia, and tracheostomy.

As an avid fitness practitioner, Gemma believes in the strength of persistence, and is passionate in empowering her clients in their journey of progress and discovery.