Assignment 1: Clinical Skills – Speech-Language

B-Assignment 1: Clinical Skills – Speech-Language

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B-Assignment 1: Clinical Skills – Speech-Language

Importance

            Many students and health care faculty staff have been reported to have lack of clinical skills (Stone, Cooke & Mitchell, 2020). These skills are necessary to foster a positive patient outcome and enhance the wellbeing of the patient. Most important skills are listening, guiding and data collection. Listening forms the basis of a patient’s symptoms and concerns. It is important since it impacts the accuracy of diagnosis and will allow proper setting up of the treatment plan. Guiding on the other hand is important since it enhances patient satisfaction and also ensures the patients are empowered. Nonetheless, accurate collection of data is important in identifying the correct diagnosis and also create an effective treatment plan. These three skills complement each other in ensuring clinicians can improve their ability to diagnose, treat and support patients towards their recovery.

Scenarios

            Foremost, listening is critical in situations where patients may have a complex symptom that would need careful interpretation, so as not to make an adverse mistake. One example is in mental assessments, where listening keenly will allow clinicians to understand the tones of a patient’s experiences (McLaughlin, et. al, 2021). Secondly, guiding is important especially in cases related to early intervention for children with speech and language delays, caretakers can be guided to use language stimulant activities. In collection of data, emergency situations can be a life and death situation, for example in cases of aphasia resulting from a stroke, accurate data collection will allow clinicians to make informed decisions fast, without compromising the patient’s health outcome.

Improvement Strategies

            In order to improve listening skills, health practitioners can make use of active listening training to practice on their reflective listening skills. Additionally, this can be accompanied by attending workshops focused on communication skills. Nonetheless, clinicians can improve their guiding skills by participating in mentorship programs to learn from experienced colleagues (Jacobsen, Sandsleth & Gonzalez, 2022). Clinicians can improve their data collection skills by engaging in simulation training to practice data collection in various scenarios. Improving the consistency in collecting data is important as to compared to the method of collecting (Dwight, 2022). It is therefore critical for the clinician to practice adequately to improve on the clinical- skills.

References

Dwight, D. M. (2022). Here's How to Do Therapy: Hands on Core Skills in Speech-Language Pathology. Plural Publishing.

Jacobsen, T. I., Sandsleth, M. G., & Gonzalez, M. T. (2022). Student nurses’ experiences participating in a peer mentoring program in clinical placement studies: A metasynthesis. Nurse Education in Practice, 61, 103328.

McLaughlin, N., Rogers, J., D’Arcy, J., & Gormley, G. (2021). ‘Sorry doctor…. I didn’t hear that….’: phenomenological analysis of medical students’ experiences of simulated hearing impairment through virtual reality. BMJ Simulation & Technology Enhanced Learning, 7(4), 207.

Stone, R., Cooke, M., & Mitchell, M. (2020). Exploring the meaning of undergraduate nursing students' experiences and confidence in clinical skills using video. Nurse education today, 86, 104322.