JCPSLP Vol 17 No 1 2015

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

JCPSLP

Volume 17, Number 1 2015

university, six clinicians in total, were invited to participate in

this study via email or phone contact. All six clinicians

accepted (Group A). Invitations were then extended to six

clinicians known to the lead author not to take students and

five accepted (Group B). Consent was obtained from all

participants to be interviewed. Table 1 provides summary

data on interview participants in both groups.

Group A participants had a mean of 8.3 years of

experience (range = 5–11 years) and Group B had a

mean of 18.2 years of experience (range = 12–25 years).

All participants were in private practice as their primary

position. Ten out of the 11 participants were female, which

is similar to the national gender demographic of speech

pathologists (HWA, 2014). Most participants were practice

owners, either in sole trader positions or employers. The

majority provided paediatric services only.

Data collection

The lead author completed an interview with each

participant using a semi-structured interview guide.

Examples of questions include: “Tell me about yourself and

your practice (e.g., years of experience, caseload,

employment status, service deliveries used within the

practice, funding schemes accessed for clients)”; “Tell me

what you see as benefits of having students in your

practice”; “Would you consider taking students in the

future? If yes? – what are the perceived benefits, and

perceived barriers/challenges. If no? – why?” As this was a

scoping study, exploring clinician views and perceptions,

semi-structured interviews were chosen as they are the

most widely used format in qualitative research, allowing

the interviewer to explore more deeply into the issues being

investigated (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006). The

interviews were conducted either face-to-face or over the

phone depending on participant availability. Group A

as clinical coordinators to describe barriers to speech

pathology student placements and identify ways to address

them. They found that allowing clients to choose and

consent to having a student clinician and by maintaining

an “apprenticeship” style of supervision, the positives for

the student, client, and private practitioner outweighed

the negatives. They went on to conclude that student

placements are possible in private practice. However, their

report was based on evaluation of one student’s placement

in one private practice, and did not explore a range of

known barriers to placements in private practice.

A first step in diversifying and increasing student

placements in speech pathology private practice is to

understand the barriers and benefits private practitioners

perceive about supervising students in private practice.

We conducted a quality improvement project with two

groups of private practitioners, those who had previously

supervised students on placement and those who had

not, to explore their views and perceptions of (a) roles

for, barriers to, and benefits associated with student

placements in private practice and (b) satisfaction of

clinicians, parents/clients, and students involved in student

placements in private practice.

Method

This project used semi-structured interviews with two

groups of speech pathologists working in private practice:

those who had supervised student placements and those

who had not.

Recruitment

Convenience sampling was used to recruit speech

pathologists through private practice and university

networks in New South Wales, Australia. All private practice

clinicians known to take students from the authors’

Table 2. Participant identified factors requiring participation of private practices in student placements