Ever wonder what your students are thinking? We do too. This new, two part series will explore the student perspective.
What has been most rewarding when learning in real clinic environments?
Jessica, 2nd year AUDI student: During my audiology externship at St. Paul’s Hospital, I really got to see “aural rehabilitation” (AR) in motion. The term AR covers a huge range of services that audiology can provide, but the effects of AR can be seen both short-term and long-term. At St. Paul’s we see adults that have received a cochlear implant (CI), and during the initial activation of their implant, they receive immediate aural rehabilitation from the audiologist, 1:1 for 3 consecutive days. During this time, the audiologist will turn on their CI for the first time, and then they may start with saying the words, “yes” and “no”. The patient simply has to tell if they hear a difference between the words. Once this is mastered, the audiologist will ask the patient to differentiate between days of the week heard, and then simple questions. After doing a couple “switch ons” myself, it was SO rewarding to see these patients who had very little hearing before their CI, be able to then have a conversation with me as my mouth was covered from them. Wow.
Matt, 2nd year SLP student: Working with families is rewarding for several reasons. Whether it has been on the acute care ward or traveling into people’s homes to work with small children, families are always the people who give context to our work: they show us who the client truly is. Especially when the client is in a reduced position for self-advocacy (for example, pediatric clients, or patients with reduced communication capacity), working with families helps turn the theoretical towards the functional in a way that enhances practice by ‘complicating’ clinical application with real-world considerations; these ‘complications’ require creativity and collaboration to make our approaches fit the family’s needs and abilities. There’s real satisfaction in finding a treatment plan that is targeted and attainable – it seems that, usually, these are the plans that have greater utility and functionality than you’d anticipated, and hearing that back from a family is very rewarding. Getting to know a client through their loved ones is a constant reminder to look past the impairment. Our patients and clients are always central to networks we can only catch a glimpse of but are nevertheless responsible to; supporting connections between people through communication gets at what is most human through what is most easily overlooked.
What are the qualities of Clinical Educators that have made your externship learning successful?
Jessica: My best clinical educators have been ones that allowed me to do the most I can with patients, within my scope of practice. For me, it is not enough to observe what is going on during appointments, I need to be the one interacting. The clinical educators that had confidence to let me fulfill the role of an audiologist (with supervision) really completed my learning experience.
Matt: Knowing how to foster independence is a crucial skill in a Clinical Educator. For a number of reasons, going into a clinical externship is usually pretty stressful. My first placement was in acute care coupled with outpatient care, attending to a whole host of needs: voice, dysphagia, linguistic-cognitive assessment and treatment, aphasia, dysarthria, neurodegenerative illness, acquired dysfluency. And that was all day 1. My CE’s approach was to discuss areas where I felt more confident and those where I was most concerned with gaining experience – not where I was concerned I was lacking. I felt from the first moment that my CE understood how clinical skills coalesce – through learning, experience and time. We had several variations on this discussion across my placement, and over time I came to understand – my CE was building my independence by giving me the chance to assess my skills through the lens of a specific experience or interaction with a patient. And my CE was doing it in a way that framed the experience as one shared by colleagues, an interaction that was valid both as learning and as care. This approach made the experience very real: I’d made appropriate and beneficial clinical decisions that resulted in real outcomes for a patient. I distinctly remember the feeling, when the time came to take on patients independently, of relaxing into the role, of focused listening and calm consideration that came over me, because I’d shown myself to have the knowledge and skills to provide treatment; I deserved to be there, not as a reward, but because we’d been developing my independence and clinical decision-making together day after day.
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Thank you to all who have responded to our Call for Externships in 2019, and to those of you who offered after reading our December newsletter. Your responses are truly appreciated.
We are still searching for offers in SLP Externship 3 (September to December 2019):
- 8 Adults
- 14 School District
- 3 Preschool
SLP Externship 3 takes place while students are attending classes, so offers are kindly requested from lower mainland sites only.
If you are able to help this year, please email clinical.assistant@audiospeech.ubc.ca. Thank you.
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(Back) Darlene Hicks, Sasha Brown, Eavan Sinden, Cheryl McGee, and Sandy Taylor
(Front) Jamie Baudru and Marcia Choi
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We would like to introduce you to Cheryl McGee, Clinical Practicum Coordinator.
Before working at UBC’s School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, what was your most interesting job?
I have had so many interesting jobs during my 13 years of clinical experience, including private practice, acute care, and a private school. My most memorable has been at the Fanning Neuro Rehabilitation Unit in Calgary. Over the 8.5 years I was there, I worked with hundreds of stroke clients with Aphasia, Dysarthria, Apraxia, Cognitive-Communication difficulties and Dysphagia. I was so lucky to work with an incredible interdisciplinary team of other SLPs, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Recreation Therapists, Social Workers, Nurses, Nursing Assistants, Physicians, Physiatrists, and Pharmacists. The one thing that I took away from this position and still think about is the life lessons I learned from my clients. Even when they had significant communication difficulties, they still just wanted to tell their life stories. I remember some sessions, totally abandoning my session plan, and just listening to my clients. Afterwards they would sometimes apologize for not getting to the activities I had planned and I always answered, “The ultimate goal of speech therapy is to have a conversation so you did your speech therapy today.”
What is your favorite part about your job with UBC’s School of Audiology and Speech Sciences?
My favorite part of my position is connecting with Clinical Faculty and Clinical Educators all over British Columbia. As a part of my role as a Clinical Practicum Coordinator, I have the privilege of meeting with SLPs and Audiologists, locally and remotely, to personally thank them for their support of UBC students, and our Clinical Education Program. My responsibilities in this role are also to retain the Clinical Educators that we currently have relationships with and to recruit new mentors. I have met SLPs and Audiologists in Merritt, Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton, Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, Courtney, and Port Alberni, via Clinical Education Outreach trips, meetings, presentations and informal Meet and Greets. I hear comments such as, “I’ve supervised many UBC students over the years and have never met a Clinical Coordinator before in person.” It is truly wonderful to thank these Clinical Educators for their ongoing diligence, support, and dedication to our students.
Can you tell us a random fact about yourself that most people would be surprised to hear?
Two weeks after I turned 18, I decided to go sky diving with some of my friends in my first year of University, in winter, in a small town north of Edmonton. I now know that my 18-year old frontal lobe was not yet fully developed, and can now fully admit that there was very little critical thinking that went into this decision. This was in 1997, before cell phones and social media. I remember calling my mom on a pay phone at the Sky Diving School, telling her that I was going to be jumping out of an airplane. She didn’t really say anything and definitely did not tell me not to jump out of a plane - I think she was in shock because this was out totally out of context for me.
This skydiving experience was not a tandem jump! After 6 hours of watching videos, reading a manual, taking a paper and pencil test, and practicing jumping out of a stationary plane onto the ground, we were apparently qualified to jump out of a plane all by ourselves, at 12,000 feet in the air. After the take-off (terrified and finally contemplating the significance of this decision), I exited the plane, stood where I was supposed to, hanging on for dear life in the violently cold wind, jumped backwards, and the jump instructor threw the parachute out after me. I experienced 5 seconds of free fall (while trying to practice my jump stance I had practiced so diligently on the ground). This was the longest 5 seconds in my life, as I watched and waited for the parachute to open. Thank goodness, it did. After this terrifying 5 seconds, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, let out some proud and enthusiastic yells and took in the views. However, I was so engrossed in the jump that I did not give myself enough time to find the jump zone for the landing. When the jump instructor said, “Jumper Number 2, prepare to land,” I was nowhere near the jump zone. Instead, I landed in a farmer’s field in 2 feet of hard-packed snow.The jump instructor then said, “Jumper Number 2, run around your parachute and collect your parachute.” Well, with the -20 Celsius weather, the strong winds, and the 2 feet of snow, this was nearly impossible. Eventually, the jump instructors took pity on me and came to get me in a pick-up truck. I called my mom afterwards and said, “Hey mom. I did it! I’m okay.” I received a VHS tape of my jump that I still own to this day. I do not have the technology to watch it, but I do have the evidence that I went sky diving.
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Welcome to the new Clinical Faculty from 2018.
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| Cortnay Nicole Anger |
| Stephanie Assmann |
| Janelle Balkwill |
| Lori Bell |
| Chloe Benson |
| Ido Bornstein |
| Christel Brockerman |
| Frances Campbell |
| Christine Chan |
| Yik Kwan Nicole Cheng |
| Dario Coletta |
| Carrie Collins |
| Kristen Cowell |
| Lindsay Donaghy |
| Sabrina Driedger |
| Dominique Ducharme |
| Holly Duffy |
| Alicia Duncan |
| Sharon Fineberg |
| Carolyn Fleck-Prediger |
| Marcia Goldbach |
| Katie Hamilton |
| Olga Haralabous |
| Myron Huen |
| Rachel Kennedy |
| Nicola Keohane |
| Anne-Marie Kidd |
| Allysa Knutson |
| Alison Kumpula |
| Sarah Lau |
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| Ashley Lequereux |
| Colleen Leung |
| Jacqueline Lim |
| Shane Lin |
| Malgorzata Macior-Headrick |
| Daina Markoff |
| Heather Massick |
| Terence Miranda |
| Mia Mosters |
| Aleta Nelson |
| Jana O'Connor |
| Shannon Osmond |
| Stephanie Pascoe |
| Chantale Pirouet |
| Johane Rakotoarimanana |
| Sharon Reisdorf |
| Jeff Rowell |
| Lucy Ruthven |
| Lola Saidmuradova |
| Lori Schneider |
| Katie Scozzafava |
| Nichole Sorensen |
| Osamu Takai |
| Camille Traverse |
| Lisa Tremblay |
| Suzanne Vanden Heuvel |
| Selena Vermey |
| Katherine Yoshida |
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