Abstract
BackgroundUpon graduation, newly qualified speech-language therapists are expected to provide services independently. This study describes new graduates’ perceptions of their preparedness to provide services across the scope of the profession and explores associations between perceptions of dysphagia theory and clinical learning curricula with preparedness for adult and paediatric dysphagia service delivery.MethodsNew graduates of six South African universities were recruited to participate in a survey by completing an electronic questionnaire exploring their perceptions of the dysphagia curricula and their preparedness to practise across the scope of the profession of speech-language therapy.ResultsEighty graduates participated in the study yielding a response rate of 63.49%. Participants perceived themselves to be well prepared in some areas (e.g. child language: 100%; articulation and phonology: 97.26%), but less prepared in other areas (e.g. adult dysphagia: 50.70%; paediatric dysarthria: 46.58%; paediatric dysphagia: 38.36%) and most unprepared to provide services requiring sign language (23.61%) and African languages (20.55%). There was a significant relationship between perceptions of adequate theory and clinical learning opportunities with assessment and management of dysphagia and perceptions of preparedness to provide dysphagia services.ConclusionThere is a need for review of existing curricula and consideration of developing a standard speech-language therapy curriculum across universities, particularly in service provision to a multilingual population, and in both the theory and clinical learning of the assessment and management of adult and paediatric dysphagia, to better equip graduates for practice.
Highlights
Frenk et al (2010) suggest that health professional education has not kept pace with the challenges facing health systems
Modi and Ross’s (2000) survey of 50 hospital based speech-language therapists (SLTs) revealed gaps in dysphagia knowledge and skills, which participants linked to the quality of their training programme: that is either the lack of a dysphagia course or to poorly structured courses with insufficient information offered
Perceptions of adult dysphagia clinical learning opportunities. These results demonstrate that perceptions of inadequate theoretical coverage and lack of clinical learning opportunities with the assessment and the management of both paediatric and adult dysphagia were significantly associated with poor preparedness for practice
Summary
Frenk et al (2010) suggest that health professional education has not kept pace with the challenges facing health systems. South African studies in speech-language therapy (Modi & Ross, 2000; Penn, Mupawose & Stein, 2009; Wranz, 2011) reflect this trend, finding that graduates were not sufficiently prepared by some university curricula to provide dysphagia services. Penn et al (2009), in describing the community service experiences of 132 graduates from the University of the Witwatersrand, reported that many felt unprepared to provide dysphagia services, with a further challenge related to dealing with the linguistic diversity of patients. This study describes new graduates’ perceptions of their preparedness to provide services across the scope of the profession and explores associations between perceptions of dysphagia theory and clinical learning curricula with preparedness for adult and paediatric dysphagia service delivery
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