[Dysphagia] Qualifications

[Heidi.Bassani at amedd.army.mil (Bassani, Heidi D Ms WRAMC-Wash DC)]

I personally think that Speech Pathology needs to be a bit more
compartmentalized than it is currently in this country.  The fact that
Masters programs are teaching a huge amount of info in a short period of
time is regrettable given the undeniable fact that many people come into
the field with a specialty (at least in terms of adult vs. peds) in
mind.  I hope that as we look toward a PhD (or an ScD) in SLP as
audiology has done, this will help the matter.  

However, as a relatively new clinician in who has had the chance to work
with several wonderful people who came up in programs, back in the
day;-)that did not offer dysphagia courses, I would like to say that we
are currently trying (as a field) to better this aspect of speech path.
However, all the book-learnin' in the world will NOT teach you the
clinical skills that you need to make these decisions.  

First and foremost, many people can pass courses and simply do not have
the basic clinical skills to integrate that info into the real world of
"case studies".  And no academic program will prepare you for all the
information that you will need to practice.  They are not designed for
that.  The purpose of the program is to gain a basis on which you build
and understand what you are seeing and make logical informed decisions.
The fact that some people don't or can't do that makes us no worse than
any other field.  In addition, there are plenty of people out there who
consider themselves "experts" who just don't know anything.

I'm ranting like everyone else but perhaps it's just me...did anyone
else completely miss the point of the original email?  Was it to create
a basis by which all speech paths should be held in order to practice?
I'm pretty sure there's a group that does that!  And we can argue it all
day. Or was it to discuss Dr. Campbell-Taylor's qualifications?  I
missed it....

Heidi

-----Original Message-----
From: HAL9600@aol.com [mailto:HAL9600@aol.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 8:03 AM
To: LOBSTERPAM@aol.com; LLORTEAU@sbgh.mb.ca
Cc: dysphagia@b9.com
Subject: Re: [Dysphagia] Qualifications

I personally think Ph.D. in our field as entry level requirement is long

overdue.  I wrote an article about 10 years ago in ASHA saying so.
Wasn't 
popular then and I doubt it's any more popular now.  Beam me  aboard?