Miss Caitlin Moyns1, Mrs Katherine Morris1, Miss Danielle Weisgerber1, Miss Victoria El-Khoury1, Joanne Whiteoak1, Mrs Julie Thai1, Mrs Talin Gochian1
1Eastern Health, Australia
Biography:
Caitlin Moyns is a Senior Speech Pathologist from Eastern Health in Victoria. Caitlin has extensive knowledge and expertise in the management of swallowing and communication in the adult acute care setting. Caitlin has supervised many staff and fostered their learning in the clinical setting through developing skills in specialist clinical areas. Caitlin has received recognition for her excellence in clinical education of students and has supervised students from a number of universities and at different stages of proficiency.
Abstract:
Learning in the clinical environment is a cornerstone of the student journey. It is an opportunity to shape the future of healthcare through empowering a new generation of clinicians to be holistic, evidence-based and compassionate clinicians.
This project aimed to revise Speech Pathology student tutorials to ensure they reflected current evidence, met the needs of Speech Pathology clinical educators and provided students undertaking clinical placements within a large metropolitan public health service with engaging and relevant learning opportunities.
Current tutorials were no longer in line with the evidence base and therefore were not being utilised by clinical educators. Learner-centred case-based tutorials in line with current education practices were implemented that could be delivered online to aid accessibility to students attending clinical placements at various hospitals and community programs within the organisation.
Four initial topics were selected based on relevance to clinical placement settings. Cases were developed using elements of real-life clinical cases, and learning objectives were linked with Speech Pathology Australia education Competency Based Occupation Standards (CBOS). Diverse question and activity types were included to provide opportunities for practical application of knowledge.
Tutorials were piloted across two near-entry or entry level student cohorts from two universities. 100% of students strongly agreed or agreed that the tutorials resulted in high engagement, positive learning experiences and high applicability to real-life clinical scenarios. This aligned with feedback from facilitators.
The project team are currently fine-tuning the tutorial series in line with service needs, additional tutorial topics, clinical areas, and student levels of proficiency.