ACQ Vol 10 No 3 2008

F rom the P resident I ntervention 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 http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_ 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 www.speechbite.com.au. 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

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S peech P athology A ustralia