Speech Pathology Profession

Difficult professional conversations: tips to help control emotions

23 August 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

Many Speech Language Pathologists in private practice are people pleasers, overworked and under-resourced.

Disagreements about priorities, caseloads, workloads and feedback are inevitable. They can feel threatening and stressful.

When threatened, many of us switch to “fight or flight” mode, making it hard to think rationally and professionally.

We can implement strategies to interrupt this physical response to keep our cool during difficult conversations:

Breathe: Focus on the sensation of air coming in and out of your lungs, or your nostrils. Breath in slowly through your nose for a count of 4 and out for a count of 8 through slightly pursed lips, at least three times.
Anchor: Notice the feeling of your feet on the ground.
Move: If possible, get up and walk around. If this is not possible, do small physical acts like crossing two fingers or slowly touching each finger with your thumb.
Use a mantra: Repeat a phrase to yourself to remind yourself to stay calm, e.g. “Go to neutral”.
Label: Name your emotions and examine them, recognising you are not your thoughts. Put space between your (temporary) emotion and your identity.
Take a break: excuse yourself for a moment to get some water, coffee, or to go to the bathroom. (This can also help give your conversation partner a chance to cool off and reset.)

Source: Gallo, A. (2017). How to Control Your Emotions During a Difficult Conversation. Harvard Business Review, Digital Edition.

For more on supervision of speech pathologists, check out our book “How to supervise speech pathologists properly in private practice“.

This article also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

For speech pathologists in private practice, professionalism has never been more important

16 August 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

For Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) in private practice, professionalism has never been more important. Here’s why:

“Professionalism” is a combination of knowledge, skills, trustworthiness, and altruism found in those who commit themselves to a life of service to others.
Because of our knowledge and expertise, SLPs have social prestige, asymmetrical power over clients and families, and regulatory privileges (e.g. under civil liability laws and Medicare and NDIS rules).
SLPs in private practice must balance our clients’ interests with our desire to create positive social outcomes, our legal, health and financial risks, and our need to make a sustainable living.
Governments bodies and speech pathology associations guide SLPs through this minefield, e.g., by requiring us to adhere to codes of conduct, professional standards, and a code of ethics.
The demand for speech pathology services has never been higher. Many private practice owners are struggling to employ and retain enough staff and most of us are working hard to manage long waitlists.
Despite the high current demand for speech pathology services, the position of the SLP profession is precarious. Challenges include:
- our lack of a protected title under National and state health practitioner regulations;
- the rapid recent growth of the profession and a shortage of experienced and trained supervisors to support early career speech pathologists properly;
- increasing professional compliance costs and requirements, including with respect to ongoing professional accreditation;
- continuing high burnout/turnover rates;
- pressures from clients and insurers to deliver more for less;
- an influx of competitors and substitutes, including from:
  - speech pathology students, assistants and other paraprofessionals;
  - outsourcing and remote SLPs providing telehealth services from lower-cost jurisdictions (though the size of this issue is hard to quantify);
  - the increase in the number of clinics owned and operated by professional investors who are not SLPs or other allied health professionals; and
  - disruptive technologies, including artificial intelligence applications and the digitisation and globalisation of services;
- the proliferation of information sources about our field of knowledge;
- the growing social distrust of experts, credentials, and science, generally;
- valid criticism of our profession’s history, biases, prejudices and lack of diversity;
- stagnant rebates and quasi-price controls over some of our regulated services while wage and business costs are increasing;
- our vulnerability, as practices, to negative public feedback, including from online reviews; and
- high levels of general uncertainty in private practice, including about the future.
SLPs in private practice must not respond to these challenges with a ‘race to the bottom’ or lowered standards. Resource constraints and competition are very real; and we need more innovation, cooperation, and better systems to do more with less and not burn out. For example, we can improve our training and supervision systems for SLPs and assistants, embrace new technologies so we can help more people, and use social media responsibly to advocate for our clients and increase client access to services while maintaining trust.
As professionals, we must invest in the essential elements that make what we do valuable for the clients and communities we serve. This includes:
- expanding our ‘circle’ of functional, core, workflow, and leadership, competencies (knowledge, skill, and experience);
- supporting our colleagues to take calculate risks and to trial innovations, including by becoming more tolerant of SLPs who are trying new things – even when they fail;
- upholding professional ethics and standards especially through hard times;
- articulating common values above and beyond our health ethics foundations, including altruism, good judgment, empathy, discernment, probity, practicality, and clarity; and
- increasing our service quality and value for money, including our:
  - commitments to client and staff safety;
  - willingness to accept and act on feedback;
  - preparedness to work collaboratively with clients, families, other professionals, and the communities we serve; and
  - ability to form trusted, long-term relationships to increase our reach.
For the sake of our profession’s future – and the viability of our practices and careers – we must protect these elements of professionalism at all costs.

Key source: Beaton, G. (2022) Why Professionalism Matters More Than Ever (White Paper), Australian Council of Professions, May 2022.

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Retain your speech pathologists with better professional development systems

6 June 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

Retaining talented speech pathologists is both a top priority and challenge for most private practices.

Practice owners can increase staff retention in several ways, e.g. with money, clear career paths and promotion opportunities, and by offering flexible work schedules, e.g. part-time and remote working options.

An often-overlooked retention strategy is on-the-job professional development. It doesn’t have to be expensive and gives speech pathologists something they really want.

Studies in other industries show that:

94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development;
bored employees are twice as likely to leave;
employees who get professional development are 15% more engaged, and have 34% higher retention; and
organisations with a strong learning culture are 92% more likely to develop new services and processes; 52% more productive; and 17% more profitable than their peers.

To improve professional development in your practice without ‘breaking the bank’, private practices can:

build professional development into their onboarding and induction processes, with training on practice strategy, employee motivation, teamwork and key technical skills;
set aside time every month for employees to explore an area of professional interest unrelated to their current caseload;
create training rituals, e.g. by scheduling “Drop Everything and Learn” (DEAL) sessions, where everyone stops what they are doing and takes an online course, or by hosting regular journal club meetings led by team members; and
offer one-to-one coaching sessions beyond day-to-day supervision, with access to experienced clinicians.

By focusing on professional development, private practices can reduce turnover, improve their reputations as employers, and make their workplaces better for everyone (including clients).

Key source: Keswin, E. (2022). 3 Ways to Boost Retention Through Professional Development. Harvard Business Review, April, 2022.

Retain your speech pathologists with better professional development systems

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in one-to-one supervision sessions

3 June 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in one-to-one supervision sessions:

If we could improve in any way, how would we do it?
What’s the number one problem with our practice? Why?
What’s not fun about working here?
Who’s doing a great job? Whom do you admire?
If you were me, what changes would you make?
What don’t you like about our services for clients?
What’s the biggest opportunity we’re missing out on?
What are we not doing that we should be doing?
Are you happy working here?

Source: Horowitz, B. (2014). The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Harper Collins, NY, NY.

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in supervision sessions

For more on supervision, check out our book “How to supervise speech pathologists properly in private practice“.

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

9 ideas to increase engagement and reduce burn out by designing work your team will love

2 June 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

If less than 20% of your work consists of things you love to do, you are far more likely to burn out. Practice owners should design work with love in mind:

Encourage staff to set goals, both for their career and personal life.
Invest in each employee’s ongoing education, either directly through training or by giving employees time to pursue their own projects.
Stay connected with your alumni.
Don’t over-rely on standardised competence tools: there is more than one way to be a great speech pathologist.
Organise around teams: workers who feel part of a team are 2.7 times as likely to be engaged, 3 times as likely to be highly resilient, and twice as likely to report a strong sense of belonging.
Hire interesting speech pathologists: each person’s “loves and loathings” can be combined with others to make the team greater than the sum of its parts. Assign projects based on each individual’s strengths and interests.
Discard rituals that erode team trust, like staff rankings based on output-based KPIs.
Pay individual attention to each speech pathologist. Supervisors who check in 1:1 every week drive their team member’s engagement up 77% and reduce turnover by 67%.
Schedule once-a-week 1:1 supervision check-ins. Ask four key questions:
- What did you love about last week?
- What did you loathe?
- What are your priorities for the next week?
- How can I help?

Source: Buckingham, M. (2022). Designing Work That People Love. Harvard Business Review, June 2022.

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.