[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Paul Brocklehurst
Date: 02 Oct 2006
Time: 16:25:03 -0500
Remote Name: 80.3.128.8
I’m grateful to see this topic being brought up. My feeling is that it’s important for more reasons than most people realize. I’m hoping to graduate as a (UK) speech & language therapist this year. Last week, at uni, we had a lecture on how to go about applying for work in the National Health Service. One of the first things we were told was that, due to cut-backs, all new SLT posts in the UK have been frozen and there are therefore currently very few jobs available. It seems that speech therapists are just not considered very essential… and I’m told that a not-insignificant part of our problem stems from the fact that we lack a strong tradition of evidence-based practice… Compared to other disciplines, we’re not very good at proving our effectiveness. So it seems strange to me that, at a time when both ASHA and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists are keen to establish speech therapy as an evidence based profession, that both organizations have adopted these person-first policies without first undertaking any research into their possible effects. Surely this further undermines our credibility and results in less funding for our services? It seems to me that the important issue here is not whether we use one type of label or another, but simply that, whatever type we use, we base our use on objective scientifically-derived evidence. So I hope the discussion of this topic inspires more researchers and students to carry out surveys in this area. Here is the link to the unpublished study by myself (Paul Brocklehurst) & Graeme Johnson that you mentioned in your introduction. http://www.abia29.hemscott.net/Stammerer_or_PWS.htm