A Survey of Early-Career Speech-Language Pathologists: Determining Perceived Readiness for Clinical Management of Adults with Dysphagia After Completing Graduate School
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Several studies have identified a recurring trend that speech-language pathologists (S-LPs) in countries such as the United States (Caesar & Kitila, 2020), South Africa (Singh et al., 2015), and Malaysia (Kamal et al., 2012) report lower levels of confidence in dysphagia management, whether in comparison to other practice areas or in certain skill areas within the specialty of dysphagia. No data currently exists exploring self-perceptions of Canadian S-LP graduates with regards to clinical management of adults with dysphagia. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the self-reported readiness of recently graduated Canadian S-LPs who manage dysphagia. Our survey was derived from a modified version of the Dysphagia Competency Verification Tool and distributed to graduates (Classes of 2018-2022) via four Canadian speech-language pathology program offices and direct emailing of graduates in select provinces. Of the 135 individuals who signed up to receive the survey, 92 eligible participants completed the survey. Median scores revealed that respondents perceived themselves to be comfortable with clinical skills related to general knowledge (i.e., educating patients), direct patient care, videofluoroscopic swallowing studies (VFSS), and basic flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing studies (FEES) skills. However, many graduates felt uncomfortable with select skills relating to dysphagia rehabilitation (i.e., providing a prognostic statement) and advanced FEES skills. Correlational analyses showed some associations between province of education and reported comfort levels in five of the survey items. Post-hoc comparisons were made between those who graduated pre-COVID and those who graduated post-COVID, the latter group scoring higher on select VFSS skills. Results emphasize the need for further research into S-LPs’ preparedness following graduation and highlight potential areas for further development in Canadian graduate programs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".