Speech Language Pathology (SLP) programs are extremely important in our society. Those who become SLP professionals are making a difference in people’s lives in very important ways. One way SLP professionals help make a difference is through assisting patients dealing with stuttering. By correcting speech patterns, a patient's confidence when speaking improves and ultimately leads to a better quality of life.
SLP training programs rely on technology, specifically video technology, to effectively train speech language pathologists. Through the use of this video technology, students gain the ability to learn with a hands-on approach which can play a critical role in a student’s development.
Video training has also been shown to keep costs down, and increase engagement and retention. Most importantly, video training allows an instructor to break down complicated information. To help SLPs in training, an instructor can play a video of a therapy session and comment along the way, breaking down the complex dynamics between the patient and the clinician.
Video technology provides powerful training sessions
A video recording of an SLP session with a patient is a valuable piece of training material for the student clinician. However, when the session is real it’s crucial that the video recording isn’t made available to anyone other than the instructor and student clinician for security and compliance reasons.
On the other hand, when a session is staged for practice, the recording of that session can be shown to any SLP in training far into the future. An instructor can play a video for an entire class to show them what an effective SLP session looks like or can also play a video of an ineffective SLP session to give students an idea of what doesn’t work and the common mistakes new SLPs make.
While an instructor plays a recorded session, they can pause the video and comment the whole way through so students understand exactly what strategies are being used. At the end of the video, students can be asked to recall what they learned.
Video recordings provide high quality, detailed feedback
Recording therapy sessions on video helps instructors provide specific and detailed feedback to clinicians in training. For instance, the University of California in Los Angeles uses the VALT video system to record therapy sessions and provide feedback to therapists in training.
Watching a video to observe a session is more effective than asking a student clinician to recall a session from memory. Memory is unreliable, and even the best memories won’t tell the whole story.
With a video, instructors get to see more than the words that were spoken. They get to observe body language during the session. Sometimes body language creates a barrier to communicating with another person and a clinical therapy session is no exception. Body language is an integral, yet mostly invisible part of communication that gets interpreted subconsciously.
Video technology helps students gain confidence faster
It takes a while for clinicians to gain enough real-world experience to be confident in their skills. While they’re learning, students benefit from being able to watch themselves on video while an instructor points out where they can be more effective while complimenting their strengths at the same time.
Video recordings are always accessible
Perhaps the greatest benefit to recording SLP sessions with a video observation and recording platform like the VALT system is those videos will all be made available in a searchable database. Videos can be tagged for easy sorting. For example, a video can be tagged with the names of the instructor and student clinician as well as the type of therapy.
With tagged video recordings, you’ll be able to find any video you need on demand. You can use the tagging system to separate demo sessions from real patient sessions and avoid breaking privacy laws.
Click the link below to find out how the right audio/video capture solution enhances healthcare training and higher education.
