Establishment of an Innovative Telehealth Speech and Language Therapy Placement as a Rapid Response to COVID-19: Sharing the Learning

Abstract

The aim of this evaluation was to explore practice educators’ and speech and language therapy (SLT) students’ experiences of a rapid response telehealth placement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to inform quality improvement. In March 2020, public health restrictions were imposed across Ireland in efforts to ‘flatten the curve’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All placements were cancelled. According to an Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists survey in April 2020, 47% of SLTs were redeployed to swabbing and contact tracing roles, and many remain redeployed seven months later. This redeployment, along with strict public health measures in clinical sites, significantly reduced the availability of clinical placements. A rapid response was required to enable students to develop clinical competencies. Although telehealth has been used to deliver speech and language therapy in other countries, it had not been used routinely in service provision in Ireland. In this article, we outline how we built on existing partnerships with practice educators, both on- and off-site, to design a much-needed telehealth placement. We explored educators’ and students’ experiences using an online focus group and online survey respectively. The evaluations of practice educators were positive in that despite their initial apprehension, they reported that this placement provided valuable learning opportunities for students while also providing benefits for clients. They also reported some technological and sustainability challenges. The students also evaluated this placement positively with 83.3% of respondents rating the placement as ‘excellent ‘and 16.7% rating it as ‘good’. All stakeholders valued this learning experience.

Robot-Assisted Language Education and Speech Therapy for Children with Cleft Lip and Palate

“…Regular speech and language therapy is important for children with CLP to ensure that disruptions to normal development are minimised. During the COVID-19 pandemic, where many in-person support services were closed or limited, technology played a vital role in maintaining speech therapy provisions, such as through telehealth (Lyons et al, 2021). Independent of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a growing body of research exploring technologies that can augment or assist in speech and language therapy, such as web-based programs that can perform automatic evaluation of speech pathologies (Maier et al, 2019).…”

The impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on speech and language therapy services in Ireland: A mixed‐methods survey at two time points during the pandemic

“…The pandemic also affected the training of SLTs because there was an acute shortage of clinical placements (American Speech‐Language‐Hearing Association, 2020; Irish Association of Speech & Language Therapists, 2020; Kearns et al., 2021; O'Grady et al., 2021; Speech Pathology Australia, 2020). Innovative approaches to clinical education were used to facilitate students to develop clinical competencies, such as telehealth (Lyons et al., 2021; Twogood et al., 2020) and simulation (Hill et al., 2020).…”

A descriptive case report of telesupervision and online case-based learning for speech and language therapy students in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Cessation of face-to-face teaching because of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic lockdowns meant a rapid pivot for many health profession degrees to online learning, including telehealth placements, with or without telesupervision (TS). Lyons et al ( 2021 ), for example, described the rapid development of a telehealth service in Ireland to enable student placements, whilst Kamper, Dario, Waibel, O’Connor and Bourne ( 2021 ) described the rapid repurposing of existing telehealth services to include student placements during the pandemic. Other programmes in high-income countries (HICs) used online case-based learning (CBL) and/or online simulation-based learning (SBL) (see, e.g.…”

“…Various researchers have reported good learning outcomes for students using TS (see, e.g. Lyons et al, 2021 ; Nagarajan et al, 2016 ; Overby, 2018 ; Taylor & Salmon 2021 ) and for CBL (McCabe et al, 2009 ). In Vietnam, online learning and simulation were rarely used in university programmes prior to the pandemic; therefore, banks of cases for conversion to online CBL were not available.…”

“…The students had completed one or two of six planned face-to-face placements before the pandemic lockdowns halted all placements and classroom-based learning. This article’s focus is on the perspectives of Vietnamese and international clinical educators involved in the two degree programmes, although it is acknowledged that the perspectives of students are also important and under-researched (Lyons et al, 2021 ; Overby, 2018 ).…”