JCPSLP Vol 23 No 3

Creative clinical education

Clinical educators’ perspectives on transitioning to telesupervision Experiences piloting a telepractice stuttering simulation placement Catherine Easton, Claire Ellen Seaman, Narelle Patton, Melissa T. Nott, and Lisa Brown

Speech pathology clinical education is currently experiencing significant innovation with clinical educators increasingly required to transition to online modalities including telesupervision. This study reports on qualitative interviews conducted with four clinical educators who undertook telesupervision of final year speech-language pathology students during a telepractice stuttering simulated placement. Four themes emerged from the interviews: relationships with and between students; reflexive, collaborative learning; sustainability; and flexibility-enhanced learning opportunities. Successful transition to online supervision was underpinned by an openness to learning, well-developed problem-solving skills, a strong capacity for self-reflection, and peer support. The findings of this research challenge us to consider telesupervision not as supplementary, or “second-best” but rather as an opportunity to increase the quality of clinical education, variety of clinical expertise and experiences, and to increase capacity for student-centred learning. Further, this research demonstrates that telesupervision has potential to address rural and regional access to speech-language pathology education while creating workforce-ready graduates. S peech pathology clinical education is currently experiencing significant innovation and change. In response to pressing clinical education demands, a range of innovative practices have and continue to be developed and implemented. Multiple pedagogies and modes of clinical teaching and learning (including online) have been identified as beneficial to student experience and outcomes (EFPI, 2016). However, there is growing evidence of the need to support educators’ transition into technology-mediated clinical education environments (Marlow & Mather, 2017). COVID-19 social distancing

requirements have accelerated the introduction of innovative clinical education practices, including rapid adaptation of clinics involving telesupervision, telepractice and simulation to a completely online model. In this paper, we explore clinical educator (CE) perspectives on the implementation of a telesupervised simulation placement with final year speech pathology students. The term “telesupervision” is used to refer to technology mediated supervisory relationships in the context of both professional supervision of health care teams (Martin et al., 2018), and supervisor–student relationships in the context of allied health placements (Nagarajan et al., 2016). Telesupervision of students has been shown to be as effective as face-to-face supervision when used to supplement supervision provided onsite by non-profession- specific clinical educators (Nagarajan et al., 2016) and/ or as an adjunct to face-to-face supervision (Chipchase et al., 2014). Based on these contexts, Nagarajan et al. (2016) identified a range of opportunities offered by telesupervision, including opportunities to discuss student challenges, provide direct supervision, and for the clinical educator to gain greater understanding of the placement site and student experience. However, telesupervision can include a range of locational relationships between the clinical educator (CE), the student clinician, and the client (Nagarajan et al., 2018). Due to COVID-19 social distancing requirements, there has been an increased reliance on telesupervision of innovative clinical education experiences (Salter et al., 2020), for example, use of a model in which the CE, student, and client are all in separate locations has become common. Simulation-based learning refers to the use of learning environments that imitate real life environments and scenarios (Hewat et al., 2020). Simulation, including roleplay and the use of simulated patients, has been shown to be effective for clinical learning and assessment (e.g., Hill et al., 2014; Ryall et al., 2016), including the capacity for simulation to replace part of traditional face-to-face clinical education without a negative impact on student competency development (Hill et al., 2021), and observable benefits to students during subsequent traditional workplace learning experiences (Hewat et al., 2020). Emerging research regarding the use of telepractice in simulation has found that students reported increased confidence and improved clinical skills in the areas of augmentative and alternative communication (Howells et al., 2019) and stuttering (Penman et al., 2021a; 2021b).

KEYWORDS CLINICAL EDUCATION

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN PEER- REVIEWED RURAL HEALTH TELEPRACTICE TELESUPERVISION

Catherine Easton (top), Claire Ellen Seaman (centre) and Narelle Patton

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JCPSLP Volume 23, Number 3 2021

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology