Abstract
Simulation practices are growing in both popularity and necessity within speech pathology programs. Simulation use can serve to not only minimize client risk but to increase student confidence and competence prior to patient contact, particularly with low incidence or medically fragile patients. This paper describes and reflects on four individual simulation experiences within one graduate speech language pathology program and their outcomes. The use of both simulated patients and mannequin training resulted in an increase in students' perception of knowledge and confidence in their clinical skills with medical patients.
Highlights
Graduate programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) are faced with increasing challenges in providing high-quality clinical education, such as developing externship sites with diverse populations, ensuring adequate preparation of clinical supervisors, assessing student clinical competencies, and providing opportunities for students to develop entry-level clinical skills across the expanding scope of practice (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [ASHA], 2007)
Each graduate program bears the responsibility of providing the opportunity for all graduates to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills for clinical practice across the major disorder categories (Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology [CAA], 2017)
The purpose of this paper is to describe four specific simulation learning experiences (SLE) employed across the medical speech-language pathology (SLP) curriculum at Pacific University to support student learning and clinical competency development
Summary
Graduate programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) are faced with increasing challenges in providing high-quality clinical education, such as developing externship sites with diverse populations, ensuring adequate preparation of clinical supervisors, assessing student clinical competencies, and providing opportunities for students to develop entry-level clinical skills across the expanding scope of practice (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [ASHA], 2007). Each graduate program must show evidence that graduates possess the requisite knowledge and skills to assess and treat disorders areas across the lifespan, while demonstrating accountability, integrity, effective communication skills, clinical reasoning, evidence-based practice, concern for individuals served, cultural competence, professional duty, and collaborative practice (CAA, 2017). Because of these growing challenges, the Council for Clinical Certification (CFCC) updated the certification standards to allow inclusion of up to 75 supervised direct clinical contact hours to be acquired through clinical simulation methods (CFCC, 2016). Simulations can help increase standardization, equity, consistency and provide a safe learning environment for student clinical training (Quail et al, 2016)
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