ACQ Vol 10 No 3 2008

4 / 40

78 Speech Pathology Australia
From the President
Intervention is a vital part of what speech pathologists do, so
it is entirely fitting that we ask whether it works, and how
we know. These questions are, of course, crucial to the
gathering of evidence to support our practice.
Evidence is an interesting thing. You may know the story of
the six blind men and the elephant – all of whom felt a
different part of the elephant, and all of whom therefore
compared the elephant to something different (a tree, a rope,
a fan…). If you don’t know the story, you can read a version
of it at
elephant.html.
The moral of the story for us? We need to be careful with
how we approach the questions “does it work?” and “how do
we know?”. The way we do this will shape the answers to the
questions. As consumers of research in the search for
evidence, we also need to be aware of this – and Speech
Pathology Australia has made a commitment, in our strategic
plan, to support this. Under KRA 2 (Professional and Quality
Standards of Practice), you will find the key objective “Evi­
dence based practice is viewed by members as integral to the
practice of speech pathology”. Jade Cartwright, in her capacity as
CPD and Scientific Affairs portfolio coordinator, is working
with Scientific Affairs portfolio leaders, interested members
and Council to identify ways to assist members to incorporate
the evidence base into their clinical practice.
The push towards evidence based practice currently drives
thinking, not just in our discipline, but across the health and
education sectors, and also in the political arena. Gail Mulcair
and I, in our interactions with politicians in the lead up to the
federal election last year, were asked a number of “evidence”
questions (“how many unfilled vacancies are there?”, “how
many speech pathologists are there in Australia?”, “what
would be the best model for a school based service?”). We
were not always able to answer these adequately. As a result,
Council has made such issues a focus in our strategic
planning, and in our budget discussions, and has instigated a
project – “Data mapping to support lobbying” – which aims
to provide evidence based statements which can be used in
our lobbying efforts. The project has been designed to take
place in three stages. The first stage will provide information on
the prevalence of communication, voice, dysphagia and
hearing impairment in child and adult populations. The
second will summarise available data regarding recommended
caseload sizes, ratios of therapists to population or service
coverage per population for adult and child client groups,
and the final stage will identify gaps in the data and develop
proposals/strategies to address these gaps. The first phase is
currently under way. Progression to stages 2 and 3 will
depend on the successful completion of stage 1.
Another exciting development is SpeechBITE™, which was
launched in Sydney early this year. This important initiative
was initiated by Dr Leanne Togher from the University of
Sydney and is partly funded by Speech Pathology Australia.
We are proud that it is now available to interested people, not
just in Australia, but internationally. The site allows users to
search for research of interest to speech pathologists, and
provides guidelines about rating the evidence. If you haven’t
yet tried it out, you can find it at .
We may not yet have all the answers to the questions about
whether intervention works, and how we know, but the
evidence is clear – your professional association is looking for
ways to help you find the answers to the questions that are
important to you in your clinical practice.
Cori Williams