JCPSLP - March 2018

Developmental Language Disorder

Recommendations for effective telesupervision of allied health students on placements Srivalli Nagarajan, Lindy McAllister, LuAnne McFarlane, Mark Hall, Corilie Schmitz, Robin Roots, Donna Drynan, Lisa Avery, Sue Murphy, and Mary Lam

A lack of staff to provide direct student supervision when students are located in a range of sites, including student placements at locations remote from their home university, provides a challenge for effective “in-person” supervision. The availability of relatively inexpensive and portable information communication technologies (ICT) makes telesupervision (TS) of student placements possible, and with appropriate recommendations in place, TS can be effective. It can be used to provide students with encouragement to maximise learning outcomes, connect students at different sites to facilitate peer learning, and deepen university-based staff understanding of students’ placement experiences. Recommendations for the use of TS to reduce ICT barriers, manage privacy and confidentiality issues, and maximise learning from TS sessions presented in this paper are derived from a research collaboration between one Australian and two Canadian universities. T elesupervision (TS) is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools/technologies for communication between university-based academic staff (such as placement coordinators, clinical educators, tutors – hereafter referred to as university staff), clinical education/fieldwork placement supervisors at placement sites external to universities (hereafter referred to as supervisors) and students undertaking clinical education/ fieldwork placements (hereafter referred to as placements). TS (also known as e-supervision, external/remote supervision or telesupport) is attracting considerable interest from health educators around the world due to its potential use in mitigating placement challenges. Challenges include: insufficient placement numbers, lack of availability of on-site clinical/professional expertise, lack of availability of supervisors or placement site staff with expertise for specific placement types or clinical populations, and excessive clinician workloads which may limit the number of students who can be supervised at a site. Dudding (2012)

describes three models of TS. One model includes direct observations of student and client interactions using distance technology. A second involves students and university staff communicating about the student experience in a consultative model. A third model involves university staff review of video, data or other materials provided by the student and then providing feedback or discussion through email or video/audio conference. Recent studies suggest that TS achieves similar educational outcomes, or at least has no negative impact on students’ capacity to develop and demonstrate practice competence when compared with direct, on-site supervision (Andrews et al., 2011; Chipchase et al., 2014; Dudding & Justice, 2004). Current literature on TS also suggests other positive benefits to utilising TS for student placements, including (a) efficiency in communicating with students during their distant (also referred to as rural or remote) placement experiences (Hall, 2013), (b) flexible and accessible means of enabling quality interactions between students and supervisors (Taylor, 2009), and (c) enhanced student learning when used to complement on-site supervision (Reese et al., 2009; Chipchase et al., 2014). The purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations, including a specific pre-placement checklist (see Appendix), for university staff who are considering implementing TS to supervise or support student placements in allied health settings. These recommendations are grounded in data (Nagarajan et al., 2015) and incorporate critical reflections on the experiences of these authors after implementing telesupervision practices across a number of placement settings. Background The recommendations and discussion in this paper are based on a formal evaluation of the use of TS in a recent research project involving Australian and Canadian allied health students and university placement coordinators (Nagarajan et al., 2015), funded by the International Program Development Fund at an Australian university. That interdisciplinary study involved one Australian and two Canadian universities, focused on placements in speech- language pathology (SLP), occupational therapy (OT), physiotherapy (PT) and exercise physiology (EP) programs and explored: (a) the barriers and challenges associated with using personal ICT tools such as tablets and smartphones, and technologies such as internet phone systems (e.g.,Skype™) for TS of allied health placements; (b) student and university staff experiences of TS; and (c)

KEYWORDS CLINICAL

EDUCATION FIELDWORK INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY PLACEMENTS PRACTICE-BASED EDUCATION TELE- SUPERVISION THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN PEER- REVIEWED

Srivalli Nagarajan (top) and Lindy McAllister

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JCPSLP Volume 20, Number 1 2018

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au