A Guide to Clinical Placements in Speech and Language Therapy

Details:

ISBN: 978-1-907826-21-4

Release Date: January 2014

What are the emotional impacts of working with clients who have a head injury? How should I prepare for my placement in a voice clinic? What are the challenges involved in working with children who have autism?

Drawing on the experiences of over 50 students in the final year of their degree courses across the UK, this book explores and documents the challenges, emotional impacts and demands of clinical placements. Students and qualified speech and language therapists provide advice and tips that offer a unique insight into working with clients on a range of placements. Each chapter offers an insight into the students' experiences of working with a particular client group. The students also discuss the range of transferable clinical skills that they developed, which allows them to work effectively in a variety of contexts. This book is a practical resource, designed to aid students with their preparation for placements throughout their speech and language therapy degree programme.

Dr Jennifer Read is a Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Pathology at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is also a registered speech and language therapist. Her teaching areas include neurology, adult acquired language impairments and voice.

(5 Star) Review from The Bulletin The Official Magazine of The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (August 2014)

“This excellent book should be subtitled ‘everything you want to know about placements but never dared ask’. Based on interviews with 44 final-year students, it provides an overview of speech and language therapy education and addresses transferable skills essential for clinical learning. The following nine chapters focus on client groups across paediatric and adult caseloads. Each chapter starts with a short theory section and then outlines the caseload, assessments and intervention the students carried out, with sections on emotional impact, including the anxieties of working with clients, families, carers, etc. The book’s strength comes from the quotes from the students themselves as they discuss and reflect on their placement experience, how their skills have developed over time and their honesty about the emotional impact and anxieties. Other highlights are the highly practical top tips at the end of each chapter. This book will be a must-have for all higher education institutions and will be a very useful resource for students in demystifying placements when they feel they are going into the unknown.”