Speak Out October 2020 DIGITAL EDITION FINAL

"Through these collaborative and ongoing experiences,

we are stronger, wiser and more resilient..."

Rebecca Smith ready to battle it out in the Three Minute Thesis competition in lockdown style.

it can be easy to be distracted by things happening around the house. COVID-19 and data collection: The changing mindset of a researcher Rebecca Smith: Face-to-face interviews, mealtime observations, and 3D food printing experiences for people with dysphagia in the community were all modified to be completed online. This reduced some of the ethical risks around working with people with dysphagia as they would no longer be eating the pureed 3D printed food, they would only be able to see it. Other risks remained regarding the completion of mealtime observations over Zoom. Because of this, protocols were put in place to reduce the risk of choking. Rebecca Sullivan: Conducting research in a hospital environment raised ethical concerns about the additional risk I was posing to vulnerable hospital patients. Additionally, asking staff to participate when they were likely changing their service delivery models was not feasible. Redesigning the study which for me was upsetting and I thought about giving up. However, I persisted because I want to change how we think about the role of communication disability in falls in hospital. I am the first person in my family to graduate from University, let alone attempt HDR, and a lot of people have worked with me and made sacrifices to help me on this journey, and I want this achievement for myself and family. Harmony Turnbull: To investigate allied health report writing, my research involved face-to-face interviews with people with lifelong disability. Being a vulnerable group who are also experiencing significant impacts from COVID-19, the switch was made to online interviews. In consideration of people who also may have complex communication

needs, it is important to consider capturing the wider communication environment over Zoom. Finding ways to keep participants safe while being true to research philosophies and achieving research aims is vital. First and foremost, we are frontline allied health professionals Rebecca Smith: Throughout my PhD, I have continued to work clinically in a paediatric private practice on the weekend so with the outbreak of COVID-19 I faced the challenges of working with clients over telehealth and then face-to-face with masks and cough guards, although without the intensity of colleagues who faced it on a daily basis. Because of my PhD experiences of online learning, I found myself being able to empathise more with the experiences my clients faced with home learning. Rebecca Sullivan: I have felt an underlying current of guilt at being a research student and not being on the frontline in a hospital using my skills and knowledge to help people get through this. Listening to my friends who are working in hospitals reflect and work through their emotions over the phone has been hard. Some of the ways I have managed has been to provide resources I have found that may help their patient population (e.g., aphasia friendly COVID-19 information) to save them time searching, taking a supportive listener role with my friends and checking in regularly as well as recognising and reflecting on how I'm feeling. Harmony Turnbull: Four years ago, I moved from a long clinical career in the disability sector to the higher education sector. Teaching speech pathology students and seeing them as the future of our profession took on a whole new perspective as the COVID-19 impacts on clinical practice meant they needed the capacity and skills to enter a workforce experiencing unprecedented change.

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October 2020 | Speak Out