This study describes the development of an instrument designed to evaluate audiologic counseling skills. In simulated counseling sessions, a trained actor portrayed a parent, and ten graduate audiology students role-played counseling sessions as audiologists informing the "parent" that her infant has a hearing loss. The ten sessions were videotaped, and three raters viewed the taped sessions while evaluating counseling skills with a new evaluation tool, the Audiologic Counseling Evaluation (ACE). The ACE was found to have excellent internal reliability (alpha = .91) and moderate-to-good inter-rater reliability. Raters' subjective evaluations of the tool were generally positive, and students' evaluations of the simulated counseling experience were overwhelmingly so. This instrument can be used by audiology faculty and clinical instructors to help students improve their counseling skills before interacting with parents. It can also be used in clinical settings for professional development by way of self- and peer-evaluation.
The results of the present study are consistent with findings of medical students' positive perceptions of simulated patient experiences as well as those previously reported for audiology students. Together, these data support the continued use of simulated patients as a method of instruction for audiology counseling education for breaking difficult news, and suggest a potential value of using simulated patient interactions for training counseling skills in other clinical situations and scenarios.
Understanding their own learning styles can assist students as they relate to one another and ultimately to their future clients. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the preferred learning and personality styles of a convenience sample of Central Michigan University students enrolled in the following health-related professions: Athletic Training, Communication Disorders, Social Work, and Physician Assistant. Method: Students completed two self-administered online instruments used to measure learning styles, the VARK and the online version of the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (KTS-II). Associations between VARK learning style scores and the online Keirsey Temperament Sorter II results were also examined. Results: Seventy-four percent of the students scored as Guardians (Sensing-Judging) based on the online KTS-II report and 62% were multimodal learners on the online version of the VARK. Conclusion: This study confirmed previous findings that Guardian is the preferred temperament type on the MBTI/KTS-II for health professions students. Average scores on the VARK and the Keirsey did not differ between the various health-related disciplines; however, students scoring as Idealists (Intuition/Feeling) on the Keirsey had significantly higher Aural scores on the VARK when compared to those with Guardian temperaments. There was no significant difference found between Keirsey groups and how they scored on Vark-V (Visual), R/W (Read/Write), or K (Kinesthetic) learning style dimensions.
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