Development of an Instrument to Evaluate Audiologic Counseling Skills

Abstract

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.

Application of the transtheoretical model of behaviour change for identifying older clients’ readiness for hearing rehabilitation during history-taking in audiology appointments

“…Teaching students how to build a history with the client, and to be more aware of clients' responses to history questions in the initial stage of the appointment may help them better tailor rehabilitation recommendations for clients, increase clinical efficiency, and increase long-term adherence to their rehabilitation goals. While little published literature explores current practice in teaching communication and patient-centred practice, academics have flagged that such skills are either taught via the hidden curriculum, or are poorly represented relative to other audiology topics in postgraduate degrees (Atkins, 2007;English et al, 2007). Despite this, the expectation that audiologists possess mastery of counselling skills is observed in Scope Of Practice documents found in many countries (e.g.…”

Standardized Patients in Audiology: A Proposal for a New Method of Evaluating Clinical Competence

“…Additionally, students believed that adding this type of practice and evaluation would very likely be beneficial to other audiology students. The work of English et al (2007) has shown that SP assessment is advantageous in both teaching and evaluating counseling abilities.…”

An investigation of the use of simulated patients in audiology student education

“…In summarising much of this literature, Hill To determine if SP training leads to measurable improvements in audiology student clinical skills, a reliable tool for measuring these skills is needed. To the authors' knowledge, only one such tool has been published for use in audiology education -the Audiologic Counseling Evaluation (ACE: English et al, 2007).…”

“…Secondly, there is currently no suitable published tool to accurately measure the performance of audiology students as they work with SPs in order to determine whether such improvements have been made. to evaluate audiologic counselling skills (English et al, 2007). These questions incorporate 77 desirable counselling behaviours and are organized into seven categories: getting started, breaking the news, assessing parents' understanding of/reaction to the situation, eliciting concerns, giving a time frame for action, suggesting specific actions while waiting for the follow-up appointment, and general considerations.…”

“…The ACE was adapted from the "Breaking bad news assessment schedule" (BAS) developed by Miller, Hope & Talbot (1999) which incorporated principles of patient-centred communication (Schmid, Kindlimann, & Langewitz, 2005) where opportunities were given to give both information and emotional support to a patient on a topic that was difficult or upsetting. To measure the efficacy of the ACE, English et al (2007) examined three audiologists using this tool to evaluate ten graduate audiology students counselling an SP playing the role of a client whose baby had just been diagnosed with significant hearing loss. The ACE was found to have excellent internal consistency (Cronbach alpha 0.91) and moderate-to-good inter-rater reliability (weighted Kappa values between pairs of raters ranging from 0.572 to 0.673), and the majority of its variance (0.662) was explained by student performance.…”