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Kathryn McKinley is the speech pathology manager at St
Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. Renee Heard is a speech
pathologist working in inpatient rehabilitation at St Vincent’s
Hospital. Julia Shulsinger is a speech pathologist working in
inpatient rehabilitation at St George’s Health Service in the
Melbourne suburb of Kew. Sally Brinkmann is the speech
pathology and audiology manager at Western Hospital in the
Melbourne suburb of Footscray. Robyn O’Halloran is a senior
speech pathologist at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, and
lecturer in human communication sciences at La Trobe University.
Correspondence to:
Kathryn McKinley
Speech Pathology Manager
St Vincent’s Hospital
41 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy Vic 3065
phone: +613 9231 3846
email:
To ensure the ongoing sustainability of the SCV program,
more explicit criteria around the availability and commitment
of volunteers may be required. The training requirements
may also need to be modified. For example, many speech
pathology students now undertake communication partner
training as part of their university course and therefore such
an extensive onsite training program may not be needed for
these volunteers. Given that many speech pathology students
are now receiving training in supported conversations and
those students who volunteer describe it as a very positive and
beneficial experience, it may be that providing opportunities
to have social conversations with hospital inpatients with
acquired communication disorders may provide a valuable
introductory student placement. The availability of a larger
pool of highly skilled supportive communication partners
would also enable the SCV program to be rolled out into
the other areas of the St Vincent’s health service network to
include people in residential aged care settings and those
attending community rehabilitation services. A pool of highly
skilled bilingual supportive communication partners would
also provide the opportunity to offer this program to
inpatients with communication disorders who speak
languages other than English. Finally, formal evaluation of
the program is required to investigate the reported
outcomes for patients, clinicians, and volunteers.
Conclusion
Many inpatients with communication disorders do not get
the opportunity to engage in social conversation. The SCV
program provides volunteers with supported conversation
training so that they can provide patients with the
opportunity to have supported, enjoyable conversations.
The speech pathologists, volunteers, and patients have all
reported that the SCV program provides many benefits.
Further evaluation of the program is required to understand
the benefits of this program more fully.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the St Vincent’s Hospital
Speech Pathology Department for their support and
contribution to the program over the past four years, in
particular, Bernadette Price for her contribution to the early
development and establishment of the program and Marinda
Brooks for her contribution to the extension and evaluation
of the program. We would also like to thank the volunteer
managers at St Vincent’s Hospital and St George’s Health
Service for their valued support of the program. Finally, we
would like to thank all the SCV volunteers for volunteering
their time and making a difference to patients with acquired
communication disabilities at St Vincent’s.
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