Parent's Perspective on Teletherapy of Pediatric Population with Speech and Language Disorder During Covid-19 Lockdown in India.

Aim: The pandemic COVID-19 led to the sudden imposition of lockdown and travel restrictions worldwide, that made tele practice one of the most viable options for various hospitals and healthcare centres. The present study aimed at exploring the parental perspective on teletherapy, for children having speech and language delay, during the covid-19 pandemic lockdown. Material & method: A total of 100 parents with children with speech and language delays and who have undergone a minimum of five teletherapy sessions at a tertiary care hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown were recruited. A questionnaire with 12 close-ended questions was administered over the phone call to know the parent's perspective on the impact of teletherapy and its benefits. The responses obtained were tabulated and calculated for percentage response to each question. Result: Around 95% of parents reported improved motivation for speech-language therapy for their child due to teletherapy during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and 96% of parents were satisfied with receiving teletherapy services during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Furthermore, 90% of parents found teletherapy is more cost-effective than in-person therapy, but 88% believe face-to-face consultation is also required after some time (approx. after six months). Conclusion: The overall result suggested that parents had a positive attitude towards the teletherapy sessions. They reported the therapy sessions to be very effective and compliant, and it can be an efficient alternative with more structured implementation. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12070-022-03310-y.

Raising Awareness of Hearing and Communication Disorders Among Emergency Medical Services Students: Are Knowledge Translation Workshops Useful?

OBJECTIVE: In numerous countries, emergency medical services (EMS) students receive curriculum training in effective patient-provider communication, but most of this training assumes patients have intact communication capabilities, leading to a lack of preparedness to interact with patients, who have communication disorders. In such cases, first responders could end up delivering suboptimal care or possibly wrong procedures that could harm the disabled person. METHOD: A quasi-experimental design (pretest-posttest) was used to assess the knowledge of EMS students both before and after a translation workshop on how to deal with patients who have hearing and communication disorders during emergencies. Comparisons between pretest and posttest scores were examined using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The level of knowledge scores was compared before and after the workshop. RESULTS: The results indicated that EMS students' scores improved after the workshop. There was a 0.763 increase in the average score of knowledge level. The results of this study show that knowledge translation workshops are a useful intervention to enhance the level of knowledge among EMS students when interacting with hearing and communication patients. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that such training workshops lead to better performance. Communication is a vital element in a medical encounter between health care providers and patients at all levels of health care but specifically in the prehospital arena. Insufficient or lack of communication with a vulnerable population, who may suffer from various disabilities, has a significant impact on the outcome of treatment or emergency management.

The perspectives of speech-language pathologists: Providing teletherapy to patients with speech, language and swallowing difficulties during a COVID-19 context.

BACKGROUND:  The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge impact on every facet of life. This directly included the delivery of health care from allied health professionals such as speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in South Africa. Research has shown that there is limited research done locally on the impact of COVID-19 relating to stroke care. Consequently, this results in a lack of research on the provision of speech, language and swallowing intervention using teletherapy after a stroke from an SLP point of view. OBJECTIVES:  The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of SLPs with regard to their use of teletherapy in a COVID-19 context when providing speech, language and swallowing intervention for patients after a stroke. METHODS:  This study made use of a qualitative approach. An electronic questionnaire was sent to SLPs inviting them to participate in the study. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants and thematic content analysis was used to analyse the open-ended qualitative questions. RESULTS:  The findings show that SLPs experienced a variety of facilitators and barriers to using teletherapy. Additionally, issues of access differ across the private and public sector SLPs for both the clients and the SLPs. CONCLUSION:  The current study provided research in the field of teletherapy, which is relatively new in the South African context. The study, whilst small in scale, provided some insight into the changes experienced from the shift to teletherapy.

Experience Delivering Tele-practice Services among Upcoming and Working Professionals of Speech Language Pathology

Introduction Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, tele-practice has become the new normal in the field of Speech-Language Pathology. Students and professionals throughout the country are embracing this new normal. Both groups confront problems;documentation of the problems may provide insight into how to improve tele-practice services. Aim The purpose of this study was to compare the problems that undergraduate students, postgraduate students, and working professionals in the field of Speech-Language Pathology experience in daily practice. Methods A descriptive cross-sectional survey study using a web-based questionnaire was conducted to examine the obstacles experienced by students and working professionals in the field of speech-language pathology, as well as their perspectives about tele-practice. There was a total of 20 questions. Divided into four sections, closed questions and Likert scale questions were used for demographic details, practice aspects, experience during telerehabilitation, and evaluation and treatment. Results The study had 118 participants (47% postgraduate students, 29% undergraduate students, and 24% professionals). Only 16% of clinicians were properly trained to provide services via tele-mode. All participants reported providing service to the pediatric population to be challenging, with autism spectrum disorder, fluency disorders, and hearing impairment to be difficult to handle cases. In tele-mode, undergraduate students reported a decrease in the number of cases and difficulties selecting therapy materials when compared with the other two groups. All three groups reported a lack of evidence-based teletherapy resources available. There was no difference in perceived difficulty between the three groups while conducting assessment and achieving treatment goals via tele-mode. Conclusion Tele-practice is generally recognized and employed, according to data availability. In terms of resource selection, evaluation, and treatment sessions, the difficulties faced by students and experts are disturbing. In the realm of speech-language pathology, strategies to address these issues could pave the way for tele-practice. As a result, better policies are strongly advised to address these difficulties to improve future tele-mode service quality.

Challenges in Delivering Tele-Practice Services for Communication Disorders Among Audiologists and Speech Language Pathologists.

Outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has affected immensely the service delivery to patients with communication disorders. Tele-rehabilitation has become a new norm for the service in the field of speech and hearing. Daily challenges in service delivery are widely being reported. The objective of study is to highlight challenges faced by Audiologists and Speech Language pathologists during tele-practice. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out through a web-based questionnaire regarding challenges faced by Audiologists & Speech Language Pathologists, and their perspectives towards tele-practice was compared. Total of 18 questions were divided into three sections. Section I included questions regarding training related to tele-practice, types of cases being handled, etc. Section II comprised of questions related to tele-therapy resources and section III had questions related to evaluation and treatment by tele-mode. 118 participants (47% Postgraduate students, 29% undergraduate students and 24% Professionals) participated in the study. Only 16.1% of the clinicians were trained formally for service delivery via tele-mode. All the participants reported child language disorders, difficult to handle during sessions. Participants reported lack of evidence based tele resources for the use during their practice and also stated difficulty assessing and intervening clients via tele-mode. Results show telerehabilitation is being widely used. Challenges faced by Audiologists and Speech language pathologists are difficulty handling paediatric population, lack of evidence-based tele-resources, and difficulty in evaluation & management of the patients. Effective training regarding tele practice is the need of current scenario. Future research on developing evidence- based resources is emphasized.

Digital Learning in Speech-Language Pathology, Phoniatrics, and Otolaryngology: Interdisciplinary and Exploratory Analysis of Content, Organizing Structures, and Formats.

BACKGROUND: The digital revolution is rapidly transforming health care and clinical teaching and learning. Relative to other medical fields, the interdisciplinary fields of speech-language pathology (SLP), phoniatrics, and otolaryngology have been slower to take up digital tools for therapeutic, teaching, and learning purposes-a process that was recently expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many current teaching and learning tools have restricted or institution-only access, there are many openly accessible tools that have gone largely unexplored. To find, use, and evaluate such resources, it is important to be familiar with the structures, concepts, and formats of existing digital tools. OBJECTIVE: This descriptive study aims to investigate digital learning tools and resources in SLP, phoniatrics, and otolaryngology. Differences in content, learning goals, and digital formats between academic-level learners and clinical-professional learners are explored. METHODS: A systematic search of generic and academic search engines (eg, Google and PubMed); the App Store; Google Play Store; and websites of established SLP, phoniatrics, and otolaryngology organizations was conducted. By using specific search terms and detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria, relevant digital resources were identified. These were organized and analyzed according to learner groups, content matter, learning goals and architectures, and digital formats. RESULTS: Within- and between-learner group differences among 125 identified tools were investigated. In terms of content, the largest proportion of tools for academic-level learners pertained to anatomy and physiology (60/214, 28%), and that for clinical-professional learners pertained to diagnostic evaluation (47/185, 25.4%). Between groups, the largest differences were observed for anatomy and physiology (academic-level learners: 60/86, 70%; clinical-professional learners: 26/86, 30%) and professional issues (8/28, 29% vs 20/28, 71%). With regard to learning goals, most tools for academic-level learners targeted the performance of procedural skills (50/98, 51%), and those for clinical-professional learners targeted receptive information acquisition (44/62, 71%). Academic-level learners had more tools for supporting higher-level learning goals than clinical-professional learners, specifically tools for performing procedural skills (50/66, 76% vs 16/66, 24%) and strategic skills (8/10, 80% vs 2/10, 20%). Visual formats (eg, pictures or diagrams) were dominant across both learner groups. The greatest between-group differences were observed for interactive formats (45/66, 68% vs 21/66, 32%). CONCLUSIONS: This investigation provides initial insights into openly accessible tools across SLP, phoniatrics, and otolaryngology and their organizing structures. Digital tools in these fields addressed diverse content, although the tools for academic-level learners were greater in number, targeted higher-level learning goals, and had more interactive formats than those for clinical-professional learners. The crucial next steps include investigating the actual use of such tools in practice and students' and professionals' attitudes to better improve upon such tools and incorporate them into current and future learning milieus.