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June 2016

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

Speak Out

43

Graduates Benefit

from the SPA

Mentoring Program

Transitioning from student

speech

pathologist to new graduate speech pathologist can

be a daunting process. Your first job brings about

much excitement but also many new challenges.

Three years on from this time and I still remember

being nervous about all the new roles I was

undertaking when I first entered our profession, such

as caseload management, accessing appropriate

professional development as well as making job and

career decisions. For this reason I decided to access

the mentoring program through speech pathology

Australia. I had started working as a Speech

Pathologist in a community health centre and was

obtaining clinical supervision at my workplace but

felt obtaining a mentor would further help me with

this transition from student to new graduate.

Through signing up for the program I was contacted

by my mentor Corina who had also been paired with

another new graduate. Hannah had also started her

first job as a speech pathologist working for a not-

for-profit association providing services for children

with disabilities. We therefore decided to all meet

together and undertake a more group-like mentoring

style.

Meeting in this style definitely took away some of

nerves of meeting our amazing mentor for the first

time. We met for lunch and discussed our new

graduate positions focussing on areas where we

needed extra guidance.

Corina was able to share her amazing wisdom and

knowledge to support each of us with our individual

questions and needs; and through listening to the

questions being asked and advice provided, Hannah

and I were able to learn from the experiences of

each other. It didn’t take long for all of us to see the

benefit of this meeting approach.

We all worked in paediatric services however our

caseloads differed and we each provided different

types of service delivery. This allowed us to learn

from the practices of each other. We started

meeting every couple of months over lunch on a

Saturday where Hannah and I would bring questions

focussing on a range of topics such as funding

options, deciding an area of interest, other services

available for children in WA etc. Even when we didn’t

have specific questions, being able to hear what we

had all been doing as speech pathologists would

start insightful discussions which greatly facilitated

our learning. We would contact our mentor via email

between meetings if we had more specific questions

or required further advice/information. We also used

emails to organise our next meetings.

Once our year of mentoring was officially over,

Hannah and myself were extremely grateful for the

insight and knowledge we had gained from our

mentor and even more grateful when she asked us

if we would still like to continue meeting in a more

informal capacity.

Over three years on from our initial meeting

and we are still catching up for lunch every few

months. We find it really valuable to engage in this

mentoring approach as it provides an opportunity

to hear outside points of view and also to open

up new perspectives to challenges we might be

facing in our roles. It has increased our networks

within our profession and keeps us all updated on

service delivery changes and issues facing speech

pathologists in different areas.

Corina has also been provided another mentee

who we are hoping will join our lunch catch ups so

that we can also learn from her experiences and

hopefully she too can gain some knowledge, insight

and advice from our unique mentoring.

By Lucy FitzSimons

Western

Australia

WA 804

Members

as at April 2016