Speak Out August 2019 Digital Edition

Early Career REFERENCE GROUP

WORK/LIFE BALANCE SURVEY RESULTS

balance and hope early career speech pathologists find them useful. Continuing Professional Development Interestingly fifty percent of survey respondents reported that they found it difficult to access continuing professional development (CPD). Our participants stated that this was due to a combination of factors, including: • limited awareness of where to find CPD relevant to the caseload; • travel and scheduling constraints; • inability to access CPD presented via webinar, teleconference link, etc; • high costs associated with CPD and limited workplace budgets. When asked to specify what type of CPD events participants would prefer to attend, webinar (82%), podcast (59%) and early career events (56%), were the most favoured. Respondents reported that applying discounted rates for early career speech pathologists at CPD events, delivery of information surrounding the benefit of CPD and particularly CPD surrounding evidence- based practice and providing regular updates via email links were a few ways that the ECRG could support early career speech pathologists in accessing CPD. Clinicians revealed that they were interested in accessing information and CPD events relating to videofluroscopy, management of adults with complex needs, adolescent literacy and language needs, best assessments and interventions for delayed ESL and bilingual clients and speech and language interventions for young children. We are looking forward to working closely with our early career speech pathologists and Speech Pathology Australia colleagues to bring you meaningful engaging CPD events that benefit you professionally and personally. Challenging conversations Based on the survey results, 79% of early career speech pathologists have had situations in which they felt it was challenging to initiate a conversation with their employers. These were, in descending order, speaking with a client, family member or carer (59%),

SPA’s Early Career Reference Group (ECRG) was set up to inform the Association’s engagement with and response to key issues faced by early career speech pathologists. This group is currently made up of nine members who meet regularly with SPA staff via teleconference. A number of key issues including continuing professional development (CPD), establishing work- life balance, and managing challenging conversations, have been identified as key focus areas for the ECRG. In order to guide the supports the group is developing around these key issues, students and the early career SPs were asked to complete a survey. Please see feedback from the ECRG below. We had a large number of respondents and many thanks to everyone who completed the survey. From the results, we found that the majority of you work in either private practice or public health and have been working between 0-2 years. A high percentage of you work in a paediatric caseload and spend large amounts of time completing additional work outside of designated work hours. A breakdown of the survey results pertaining to each of the key issues is provided below. Also included below are some future directions for how the ECRG aims to address each of the key issues. Work/life balance It was great to see people employing strategies to manage and balance their work and life commitments. Some of the strategies early career speech pathologists reported using to achieve work/life balance included: • Using a "to do" list/calendar/ scheduling system and setting aside dedicated time to complete indirect work task; • engaging in self-reflection on work issues; • debriefing with peers/colleagues/ friends in similar situations; • utilising supervision or accessing external supports to help manage workload; and, • exercising or having a glass of wine! We look forward to being able to share all of the fantastic strategies provided for how you manage your work/life

management of workload and productivity (54%), supervision (45%), and access to CPD (41%). Other significant difficult conversations included negotiating pay (32%), alterations to employment contract (35%), and speaking with other professionals (32.6%). In response to the survey results, the ECRG has developed a number of resources to assist ECSP in navigating difficult situations (like those mentioned above). Some of these resources include: • FAQs on negotiating workload/caseload and complexity of caseload as an early career speech pathologist. • Information about factors you need to consider when thinking about the number of “face- to-face” sessions you conduct every day (productivity levels). • Information that help early career speech administration, preparation, research, and report-writing; supervision, professional development, and acquiring resources. • Podcasts about speech pathologists facing challenging conversations in the workplace, and practical ideas to address them. The ECRG is excited to continue to reveal their ideas and projects, so stay tuned to the SPA Early Career Member Facebook page, keep an eye out for regular features about the above issues in Speak Out magazine and via the Speak Up podcasts. pathologists have discussions in their workplace about non-clinical time for

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August 2019 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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