Checklist for Assessing Graduate Student Competencies in Voice Disorders

Abstract

Low-incidence clinical disorders such as voice, nasal resonance, and fluency present challenging areas for graduate-level speech-language pathology training programs to help students acquire necessary knowledge and skills. A checklist of competencies for fluency disorders exists in the literature. The authors are presently collecting pretest/posttest data on the fluency disorders checklist over several cohorts of graduate students to determine student level of proficiency and confidence regarding these competencies. Preliminary data analysis suggests significant student perception of growth as a result of completing course requirements. These data have been useful to the second author, who teaches a course in fluency disorders and utilizes the checklist for purposes of course design and case-based project development to help students gain competence. The authors observed that a similar checklist of competencies for voice disorders would be useful for training programs as well as for other reasons described throughout this paper. Consequently, the authors compiled a checklist for assessing graduate student competencies for voice disorders. This checklist provides academic and clinical faculty with a comprehensive tool to guide the education of graduate clinicians and assist in the assurance of educational quality for speech-language pathologists.