BackgroundAdvanced communication skills are vital for allied health professionals, yet students often have limited opportunities in which to develop them. The option of increasing clinical placement hours is unsustainable in a climate of constrained budgets, limited placement availability and increasing student numbers. Consequently, many educators are considering the potentials of alternative training methods, such as simulation. Simulations provide safe, repeatable and standardised learning environments in which students can practice a variety of clinical skills. This study investigated students’ self-rated communication skill, knowledge, confidence and empathy across simulated and traditional learning environments.MethodUndergraduate speech pathology students were randomly allocated to one of three communication partners with whom they engaged conversationally for up to 30 min: a patient in a nursing home (n = 21); an elderly trained patient actor (n = 22); or a virtual patient (n = 19). One week prior to, and again following the conversational interaction, participants completed measures of self-reported communication skill, knowledge and confidence (developed by the authors based on the Four Habit Coding Scheme), as well as the Jefferson Scale of Empathy – Health Professionals (student version).ResultsAll three groups reported significantly higher communication knowledge, skills and confidence post-placement (Median d = .58), while the degree of change did not vary as a function of group membership (Median η2 < .01). In addition, only students interacting with a nursing home resident reported higher empathy after the placement. Students reported that conversing with the virtual patient was more challenging than conversing with a nursing home patient or actor, and students appeared to derive the same benefit from the experience.ConclusionsParticipants self-reported higher communication skill, knowledge and confidence, though not empathy, following a brief placement in a virtual, standardised or traditional learning environment. The self-reported increases were consistent across the three placement types. It is proposed that the findings from this study provide support for the integration of more sustainable, standardised, virtual patient-based placement models into allied health training programs for the training of communication skills.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0577-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The present study examined the relationship between anxiety, attitude toward daily communication, and stuttering symptomatology in adolescent stuttering. Adolescents who stuttered (n = 19) showed significantly higher levels of trait, state and social anxiety than fluent speaking controls (n = 18). Trait and state anxiety was significantly associated with difficulty with communication in daily situations for adolescents who stutter, but not for controls. No statistically significant associations were found between anxiety and measures of communication difficulty, and the severity or typography of stuttering surface behaviours. These results highlight some of the psychosocial concomitants of chronic stuttering in adolescence, but challenge the notion that anxiety plays a direct mediating role in stuttering surface behaviours. Rather, the results suggest stuttering is a disorder that features psychosocial conflict regardless of its surface features.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) summarise findings from previous studies with regards to stuttering and anxiety; (2) identify the sub-types of anxiety that may impact on the individual who stutters; and (3) discuss the clinical implications of the results with regards to working with adolescents who stutter.

No abstract

The findings of this clinical audit underpin the need for patient-focused goal planning rehabilitation programmes which are tailored to the individual's needs and involve a comprehensive multidisciplinary team.