JCPSLP Vol 15 No 2 2013

Clinical education

Top 10 resources for clinical education

Final-year Speech Pathology students at Charles Sturt University

T his list of resources for successful workplace program at Charles Sturt University in Albury. Students identified their most useful resources based on workplace learning experiences undertaken during the first three years of the course. These experiences included traditional placements in hospitals, community health clinics, and disability services, as well as non-traditional placements with clients and families in a range of community settings. Workplace learning (WPL) comprises a large component of their final year of study at CSU and so the students anticipate these resources will be utilised even more during the next 6–12 months! 1 Peers Students valued the opportunity to talk with other students in their cohort (and other students completing WPL at the same sites) about their experiences. Communicating with peers (face to face, via telephone and email, in chat rooms and other social media) was seen to be beneficial in enabling students to develop communities of practice , and support one another in their learning. It also provides an opportunity for them to debrief about their experiences in a less formal context than is possible through the structured reflections often required by clinical educators (CEs) and university staff. 2 Websites The Speech Pathology Australia website was identified as a valuable resource for providing student speech pathologists with important information about frameworks for practice learning experiences has been compiled by final-year students in the undergraduate speech pathology

(e.g., Code of Ethics, Competency-Based Occupational Standards for Speech Pathologists) and position statements relating to their work with particular client groups. The students also valued websites such as speech-language- therapy dot com , which they used to gather information about communication difficulties and intervention strategies, as well as SparkleBox , which they used to identify interesting and fun intervention activities for children. 3 Textbooks Books that were prescribed reading for specific subjects across the four years of the course were considered useful resources for assisting students to recall characteristics of communication and swallowing difficulties, modes of assessment and evidence based intervention approaches. Students also valued textbooks such as the Survival Guide for Speech-Language Pathologists (Moon-Meyer, 2004) which provided them with templates for practical tasks such as writing session notes and initial assessment reports. 4 Summaries Students often created their own summaries of information about particular client groups and conditions, which they then used as a reference while undertaking WPL. Students appreciated CEs providing details about the populations serviced by the speech pathologists on site prior to the commencement of their WPL, as this directed their preparation and independent study. Summaries often took the form of tables which were considered particularly useful for summarising information to compare conditions (e.g., dysarthria and dyspraxia).

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JCPSLP Volume 15, Number 2 2013

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au