About the Author

Sheila MacDonald is a speech-language pathologist with over 20 years experience in assessing and treating individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI). Sheila is co-author of Cognitive-Communication Disorders Following Traumatic Brain Injury: A Practical Guide. She also co-authored the Preferred Practice Guidelines for Cognitive-Communication Disorders, for the College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario (CASLPO, Sept. 2002), and has conducted multidisciplinary research into coma intervention, outpatient follow up, mild brain injury, and assessment measures.

In her former position at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Sheila served as manager of Speech-Language Pathology, chair of the Head Injury Team, and as a clinical educator for the University of Toronto. Sheila's clinical position included inpatient neurotrauma and long term follow up in the head injury clinic, and provided her with the opportunity to work with 150-200 individuals with ABI per year. The team’s multidisciplinary follow up research highlighted the need for assessment measures designed specifically to detect the subtle cognitive-communication deficits associated with ABI.

After participating as a clinical test site for the Brief Test of Head Injury (Helm-Estabrooks & Hotz, 1991), and the Scales of Cognitive Ability for Traumatic Brain Injury (Adamovich & Henderson, 1992), Sheila began to develop a higher level assessment measure, which has resulted in the standardization and publication of the Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies (FAVRES).

Sheila currently has a community private practice, which focuses on communication skills required for daily interactions at home, work and school. This work has led to many hours with individuals in their real world environments along with their families, teachers and employers. Sheila has been a long time advocate for individuals with ABI and has served on community agency boards, provincial associations committees, and government initiatives related to ABI.

Sheila is a frequent speaker/lecturer at professional conferences and universities. She designed a postgraduate course in acquired brain injury that was endorsed by the University of Toronto and the Ontario Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists. She has also provided numerous workshops for individuals with ABI and their families as well as members of the general public and members of government.

Sheila is delighted to announce the publication of the FAVRES which has been a truly collaborative effort involving clinicians from a number of clinical and university programs.