Current Speech Pathology students please read!

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otobrit

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Hi, I'm currently an ENT fellow at an East Coast hospital. For a research project, I'm currently working on a survey to assess the role of otolaryngology in speech pathology education. We plan for this survey to go out to speech pathology program directors. Our hospital does not have a current speech path training program, I was hoping I could ask a few questions here so I can put together a survey with appropriate questions.

1) Do speech path students ever spend part of their practical training with an ENT in the clinic?

2) What are the most common aspects of the physical exam/instrumentation performed by a speech pathologist (are these ever taught by an ENT)?

3) What are the most common clinical scenarios for which speech pathologists have to participate with ENTs and audiologists and come up with a care plan? Is cooperation with other discplines something that is taught?

Any other thoughts you have would be great!

I would love it if any of you could share your experiences, it would help me out a great a deal.

OTOBRIT

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Great idea! I'm a 2nd year MS/PhD student in speech pathology in the Midwest. Here are my answers:

1) Do speech path students ever spend part of their practical training with an ENT in the clinic?
In my program we have several clinical training experiences in which students interact with ENTs, but we are primarily trained by speech-language pathologists. These clinical practicum sites are the pediatric voice clinic, adult voice clinic, inpatient voice and swallowing service (one at the university hospital and one at the VA) craniofacial anomalies clinic, and pediatric inpatient swallowing. Students enrolled in these one to two semester long practica also attend a weekly voice and swallowing case conference attending by all the speech pathologist working in these specialties along with the attending ENTs and residents.

2) What are the most common aspects of the physical exam/instrumentation performed by a speech pathologist (are these ever taught by an ENT)?
I'm currently in the craniofacial anomalies clinic and we are taught how to complete a full oral mechanism exam and to use the nasometer to measure oral/nasal resonance by the speech pathologist, then students perform these measures independently, with supervision from the SLP. We also observe nasoendoscopy (always done by the SLP in my clinic) and have the opportunity to learn how to do rigid laryngoscopy on our fellow students (also taught by the SLP). We are not allowed to learn how to perform nasaendoscopy until we are licensed SLPs (I think this is standard around the country). Students in the adult voice clinic may occasionally observe an ENT doing nasoendoscopy and other procedures.

3) What are the most common clinical scenarios for which speech pathologists have to participate with ENTs and audiologists and come up with a care plan? Is cooperation with other discplines something that is taught?
Cooperation with other disciplines is definitely a major part of our clinical training. In the first week of training we begin working with audiology students to complete speech and hearing screening for all the children enrolled in Head Start in our county. The most common scenario for collaboration between an SLP and other clinicians is likely in a multi-disciplinary outpatient clinic setting when the whole team is providing the patient with an evaluation (initial, pre-op, post-op, pre-therapy, post-therapy).
 
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