TBI Express
TBI Express is a communication-training program for people with traumatic brain injury, their families, friends and carers.
About the program
A brain injury can result in devastating changes for the person as well as for their family and friends. Sometimes these changes can affect how the person communicates. They may speak too much or not enough, they may have trouble staying on a topic or not be able to think of what to say. Treatment can improve the communication of the person with brain injury, however families and friends are often left wondering what they can do to help. We developed TBI Express to help families and friends find the best way to interact with the person during everyday conversations.
TBI Express was developed as part of a clinical trial funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. Our research indicated that communication partners who were trained to use positive communication strategies experienced significantly better interactions following the training, compared to those who did not receive training.
We have developed videos to demonstrate positive and negative communication strategies to help you identify what works and what doesn’t.
Resources - collaboration
Not working together in conversations
Working together in conversations
Extra resources
Resources - elaboration
Not extending the conversation
Extending the conversation
Extra resources
Additional resources
- Communications skills toolkit (pdf, 34KB): a list of strategies to help collaboration and elaboration in conversation with space to tailor it to your own communication situation.
Observation sheets for videos
- Collaboration Do's and Don'ts (pdf, 100KB): this document contains video scripts accompanied by notes that direct the viewer to the unsuccessful and successful collaboration communication strategies.
- Elaborations Do's and Don'ts (pdf, 63KB): this document contains the video scripts accompanies by notes that direct the viewer to the unsuccessful elaboration communication strategies.