How experience speech-language pathologists learned to work on teams

Abstract

This study sought to understand how 10 speech-language pathologists (SLPs) learned to work on teams with other disciplines. Team-work skills are cited by universities as a generic skill their graduate possess and by professional speech-language pathology organizations as an important skill for clinicians. Few allied health curriculums, including speech-language pathology, teach explicit team-work skills. Which leads to the question: Where have experienced SLPs learned these skills? Interviews from 10 practicing SLPs determined where and how they learned to work on teams as well as team-skills that entry-level SLPs should possess. Only two of the 10 participants had any formal team training during university study and nine out of 10 participants described learning “on the job” during their first professional job with assistance from a workplace mentor. All participants believed that training in team-work with other disciplines is important to learn during university study. The needed attitudes, knowledge, and skills described for entry-level SLPs reflects similar characteristics listed by the World Health Organization's 2010 recommendation for inter-professional education. These findings support the inclusion of inter-professional education learning opportunities in the speech-language pathology curriculum.