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 purpose of this study was to explore one novice clinical educator's experiences with training essential communication and interpersonal skills using a virtual patient. Over 3 weeks, the clinical educator (CE) delivered a series of half-day clinical placements to students using an educator-controlled virtual patient, depicting an older adult male with mild dementia. Students completed one 15-minute session interacting with the virtual patient in the virtual learning environment (VLE), followed by a group debrief/discussion session. Prior to, during and after delivering the clinical placements, the CE engaged in semi-structured interviews, where she was prompted to reflect on her pedagogic approach and practice. Thematic analysis revealed six themes underpinning the CE's unique narrative: pedagogical control, validation of pedagogical practice, safety in the virtual learning environment, learning pedagogical practices, self-reflection, and adult education. The CE described how being immersed in the VLE allowed her to confidently deliver training. The findings have implications for the future training of CEs who will provide clinical education using VLEs in clinic settings.
Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are known to exhibit difficulties on auditory working memory (WM) tasks. This study investigated the impact of providing visual support on children's performance on an auditory WM task. Three groups of 18 children participated. The groups were children with SLI, age matched, and language matched control children. Participants completed 4 digit recall tasks using different combinations of auditory and visual input and output for a digits forwards (DF) recall condition in the first session and a digits backwards (DB) recall condition in the final session. The digit recall tasks accompany this manuscript and can be downloaded from http://www.informaworld.com/ijslp. For the DF tasks, the SLI and age matched groups recalled significantly more sequences when visual support was provided in input and output, and all groups showed a significant benefit from visual support for the DB condition. These findings provide further evidence that the provision of visual information supports working memory performance in children with SLI and typically developing children. This has implications for the support strategies currently used to assist children with WM difficulties.
The findings indicate that the proposed parsimonious model adequately captures predictors of speech-language pathologists' turnover and occupation attrition intentions. Workplaces and the profession may wish to consider these retention factors.
Virtual patient clinical placements improve student communication competence Effective communication is a generic competency essential to clinical practice. However, access to work-integrated placements where such competencies are traditionally developed is diminishing, compelling universities to develop supplementary placement opportunities in the form of simulated learning environments (SLE). Virtual or digital patient (VP) placements are an attractive SLE model, but evidence of their efficacy for developing student communication competence is limited. In the current study, 82 second-year undergraduate speech pathology students completed one half-day placement, requiring them to use conversation interaction skills to build rapport with a VP across two 10-minute interactions, separated by clinical educator (CE) feedback and self-reflection. Each student's interactions were rated by CEs on 25 communication competencies and, following the second interaction, students completed retrospective pre-placement and post-placement self-ratings of their communication skills, knowledge and confidence. CEs' ratings of students' performance were significantly higher following the second interaction than they were following the first (median ηp 2 = .710). Furthermore, the students' post-placement self-ratings were significantly higher than their retrospective pre-placement ratings (median dav = 1.25). These findings suggest that VP placements as simulated clinical learning opportunities support speech pathology education, and may have positive implications for all health professions.
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