Exploring Life & Business with Tracie Bearden of TBI MedSLP

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Tracie Bearden.

Hi Tracie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2010, I started my career as a hospital-based speech therapist. I have been working with the brain injury population for the last fourteen years. In 2018, I quit my job of 8 years to become a travel therapist and moved across the country to California. Within less than 8 weeks of moving to California, I was assaulted by a male nurse.

Out of that experience, I got a concussion, an optic nerve impairment, and PTSD. I also found my very first trauma therapist who helped me start discovering my own needs and values. This led me on the journey to start finding my purpose in life while recovering. Over the past five and a half years I have held different hospital-based speech therapy positions, owned a private practice, and moved a lot.

I am in no way grateful for any of the traumatic experiences I survived. I believe there is no silver lining and things do not happen for a reason. These experiences did lead me to my purpose and gave me the tools to define my values which have led me to where I am today.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not! After I was attacked, I learned a lot of life lessons in a short amount of time. I learned that some of the people you think will be in your life and by your side forever will be the ones that disappoint you the most.

Following my attack, I attended 14 out of 16 court hearings alone. Each hearing made me more aware that I would not influence the outcome of my attacker’s punishment. I continued to go to the hearings to make sure my voice was heard and in hopes that it wouldn’t happen to someone else. From 2018-2023, I had to be open to trusting people I had never met or known before with the most traumatic and tragic life experience of my life because unfortunately, it’s part of my story. This led to more judgment than I had ever thought possible.

In 2020, I started my private practice during the pandemic with unemployment and my savings after losing an outpatient contract job for refusing to discharge patients based on their insurance payor. I wore every hat at my practice for two years and can confidently say I never took a day off in those two years. These five years were the hardest I worked both professionally and personally.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about TBI MedSLP Inc?
TBI MedSLP is a 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide education, advocacy, and support for speech pathologists and healthcare providers in brain injury care to enhance patient outcomes and patient experiences. I started this organization because my passion is education and advocacy. Patients who survive a brain injury have better outcomes when providers give them digestible and clear education about their condition, prognosis, and treatment.

Patients are also more likely to continue with their treatment plan when a provider talks to them like they’re a human, not a diagnosis, which healthcare has drifted away from. The goal of TBI MedSLP is to decrease these barriers and improve patient care across the continuum.

Our organization provides monthly donation-based webinars, online resources, live speaking opportunities, and fundraising events to provide brain injury education and support other organizations promoting brain injury advocacy, research, and awareness. We operate on grants and charitable donations from our supporters and the public.

We are a non-profit educational organization, which is incredibly uncommon in the healthcare field. We aim to keep high-quality education and resources affordable and accessible to everyone to eliminate the most common barrier to great education: money. I am so proud of the organization I built and the amazing team of board members who helped me keep it going.

We all are like-minded speech therapists, some of us survivors of brain injury, with a passion for educating as many people as possible about brain injury and brain injury practices. TBI MedSLP is an organization that is accessible to anyone: Medical Professionals, Rehabilitation Professionals, Survivors Living with a Brain Injury, Families and Caregivers, and the General Public who’d like to educate themselves. Our information and resources can be found on our website and our social media pages!

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Risk-taking is a necessity to reach your goals. I don’t necessarily mean your 5-year plan goals, but the goals that burn inside of you. The goals that make you want to get up in the morning and go to work and help others.

Without taking risks I wouldn’t have found my passion or been able to leave behind incredibly toxic situations or jobs, leading me to a much healthier and happier lifestyle and mindset. Risk taking does require planning and weighing the pros and cons before jumping in, but sometimes you just close your eyes and jump feet first and have faith you’ll land on them. Risk-taking can lead you to the best decisions of your life.

The first big risk I took was quitting my job and moving across the country from everyone I knew. I took this risk without a concrete plan of what I was going to do other than travel to a new area every 13 weeks for a new job assignment. That risk led me to an extremely tragic and traumatic experience.

Thankfully, I didn’t let the outcome of one experience impede me from taking risks later. These risks include opening my private practice and starting a non-profit organization. The risks I have taken have not immediately led to great successes but have paved the path and helped guide me towards my ultimate passion.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tbimedslp.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tbimedslp
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tbimedslp
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traciebearden9

Image Credits
Tiffany Maksimowicz