The University’s Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) students really raised the bar when it came to their capstone projects this year. Out of the seven meritorious posters chosen to be featured at the annual Pennsylvania Speech-Language-Hearing Association (PSHA) convention April 10-13 in Pittsburgh, two of those were from research conducted by Salus SLP students.
“I can say without a doubt these posters represent the high-quality research and community engagement all of our students offer throughout the program and this award highlights their hard work and dedication to the profession,” said Robert Serianni, MS, CCC-SLP, FNAP, chair and SLP program director. “We are proud of this recognition and the accomplishments of these students.”
The two Salus posters honored included:
According to Albor, the group wanted to provide caregivers effective strategies that could help improve communication with loved ones to assist with the rehabilitation process and facilitate social closeness and communication. “There isn’t a lot of education provided for them, but it’s really important because these people are going to be with our clients every day,” said Albor.
The group’s study concluded that more education is needed when it comes to proper communication with loved ones who have language impairments. After presenting to caregivers about strategies to use when communicating, information was collected about said strategies. The results showed 100 percent of viewers found multimodality cuing and self care as being the most useful, and 100 percent of viewers would recommend the information to other caregivers.
“We focused on things that could be easier to implement than what a skilled SLP would do during interventions,” said O’Connell. “So, we focused on things like giving one direction at a time, using names instead of pronouns, and really emphasizing self-care for the caregivers themselves. In order to give good skilled care, you have to care of yourself first.”
In the poster on disability in SLP graduate education, both Murphy Grace and Raspanti identify as graduate students with disabilities, so they started their research with personal experiences they faced in terms of their academic careers.
“We were curious to know because we feel that as SLPs who deal with people with disabilities all the time, we’re in a unique position to support people, including students,” said Murphy Grace. “We wanted to see if some of the barriers we were facing were being experienced by others in our community.”
Turns out there was, according to their research. The two sent out an anonymous survey with more than 30 questions and received approximately 250 responses from throughout the United States.
“One big similarity was that we’re a helping profession, but we’re not helping those in our profession,” said Raspanti. “A lot of people had unfortunate experiences, just with trying to either get accommodations or comments from faculty. But that hasn’t been our experience at Salus.”
Serianni is interested in seeing the data on how the University compares to other programs across the country in supporting students with accommodations. When the two presented their poster at Salus, they were heartened to hear from several faculty and staff members.
“It felt like they were really taking in the data and what we were saying. And, some were curious how they might be able to implement changes right now,” said Murphy Grace.
The seven meritorious posters were selected from more than 45 submissions and were chosen during a blind review process involving a committee of reviewers. The students and their faculty advisors were honored at the president’s reception at the convention and received a special notation on the master list of posters outside the poster hall.
