For this assessment task, you will demonstrate your ability to apply theory to practice with an emphasis on clinical reasoning in complex cases. You will complete an oral presentation about your clinical decision making while on your Multi-Modal Communication placement. This oral presentation will focus on one client. Therefore, if you had more than one focus client while on this placement, you must choose one client for the presentation.

As part of this assessment, you must present:

1. A short introduction about your student and their background information. This may include (but is not limited to) their educational context, diagnoses, therapy history, developmental profile and current educational/therapy goals.
2. The holistic assessment you completed with the student including your reasoning for choosing this assessment and/or approach. Your reasoning should refer to the client’s profile, the workplace context, and the literature.
3. A summary of the assessment results including your analysis and interpretation. In this part you should demonstrate your ability to integrate multiple sources of information to form an initial conclusion or hypothesis about the client’s communication profile.
4. A summary of your intervention plan for the client including your reasoning for choosing the therapy targets/goals and approaches. You may make reference to the clinical context (including priorities of the context), assessment results, client profile, clinical educator feedback, the literature, theory and/or other relevant factors.
5. As part of your intervention plan, you must explain and demonstrate one therapy activity in detail. You may choose to do this ‘live’ in class or record the demonstration in advance to include as part of your presentation.

At the end of your presentation, you must answer questions about the decisions made in your case from your peers and lecturer. Your answers to these questions should demonstrate your knowledge of the case including theory/evidence, and clinical reasoning. The time limit for this presentation is 15 minutes. Therefore, at 15 minutes you will be stopped, and the content previously presented will be graded. Students will not be penalised for presenting under the time limit.

Your presentation must be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation.

Criteria one will assess your ability to:

• Provide accurate, succinct and relevant information regarding your client
• Demonstrate an understanding of the theory underlying the assessment and management of clients with complex communication needs
• Demonstrate the use of clinical reasoning in the assessment and management of clients with complex communication needs
• Engage the audience by clearly demonstrating and explaining a therapy activity used for a client with complex communication needs

Criteria two will assess your ability to:

• Utilise an engaging and professional PowerPoint presentation that demonstrates appropriate grammar, punctuation and word choice
• Communicate clearly and coherently throughout the presentation without the use of notes
• Demonstrate professional behaviour throughout the presentation including dressing appropriately
• Adhere to the APA 7th edition referencing guidelines

This term you will complete a range of sessional clinical placements across the term. These placements will provide you with the opportunity to develop your practical, clinical and professional skills across a range of practice areas, in a variety of settings and with different caseloads in preparation for your final block placements in Term 2.

At the end of each placement you are expected to demonstrate competence that is approaching entry level as described by CBOS, based on the Professional Standards.

Further information regarding the expectations when participating in clinical placements, such as dress code, attendance requirements and mandatory checks (pre-clinical requirements) can be found in the Speech Pathology Clinical Education Handbook, an electronic copy of which will be made available through the SPCH14009 Moodle page. Note that all pre-clinical requirements, as mentioned in the Speech Pathology Clinical Education Handbook (and also stipulated on the online SONIA database) must be completed prior to commencing a placement and must remain current for the duration of the placement. Any student who fails to comply will risk not being permitted to commence their placement, which may therefore affect their ability to complete this assessment task. Further information and instructions regarding all mandatory checks (pre-clinical requirements) can be found on the SONIA database or obtained by contacting the Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) team via email: smas-clinicalplacements@cqu.edu.au.

This assessment task requires you to complete and pass a range of sessional clinical placements across the term. For each placement you attend, you will be assessed against specific elements included in each of the three domains of the Professional Standards. By the end of each placement, you are required to demonstrate competence that is approaching entry-level across the following domains:

1. Professional Conduct
2. Reflective Practice and Life-Long Learning
3. Speech Pathology Practice

As outlined by CBOS, the entry level student displays the following attributes:

• performs the majority of his or her work independently and competently
• seeks support if the situation is new or a number of features about the client or workplace setting combine to create complexity
• identifies the meaningful aspects of problems and integrates these to generate a number of logically possible conclusions. Conclusions/actions will be modified with new information
• prioritises appropriately
• maintains a focus on the client or situation
• carries out his or her work in an efficient and timely manner.

Note that these placements are not assessed via COMPASS Online. For each individual placement you will instead be assessed using a separate, paper-based marking rubric which includes some elements and behavioural descriptors which have been extracted from COMPASS and the Professional Standards. This rubric can be found on the SPCH14009 Moodle page.

Both the pass and failure criteria that apply to clinical placements, including descriptors of terms such as 'approaching entry-level', are described in detail in the Speech Pathology Clinical Education Handbook. Both CEs and students should familiarise themselves with these criteria as they will form the basis of the determination as to whether a student has passed or failed this assessment task. As stated in the Clinical Education Handbook, the Clinical Education Coordinator will make the final decision regarding a student's results based on all available evidence relating to the student's performance whilst completing each placement.

In order to pass this assessment task, students must pass each individual placement they complete as part of this unit.

For this assessment task, you will need to reflect on the Professional Standards which can be accessed on the Speech Pathology Australia website:

https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/SPAweb/Resources_for_Speech_Pathologists/CBOS/Professional_Standards.aspx#h09

You will need to choose one Standard within Domain one (professional conduct), Domain two (reflective practice and lifelong learning) or Domain three (speech pathology practice). For example, you may choose standard 1.5. ‘Maintain high standards of communication, information sharing and record keeping’. You will then need to create and record an informational/educational video explaining how that Professional Standard relates to Speech Pathology practice. You should do this by:

1. Briefly introducing speech pathology as a profession.
2. Outlining the purpose of the Professional Standards.
3. Clearly identifying the standard of focus for the video.
4. Contextualising the chosen professional standard within Speech Pathology Practice with reference to the literature. This literature may not be explicitly discussed; however, it should be clear that you have consulted the literature through references on your presentation slides. You should consider how does this standard fit within speech pathology practice, why is it so important and what impact does it have on our clients?
5. Reflecting on your clinical placements throughout the course (undertaken through SPCH12007, SPCH13001, SPCH13006 and SPCH14009) and providing explicit examples of your experience with this standard. Your example/s may be in relation to key learning experiences, ‘light bulb’ moments, increasing your competency in this area and/or any reflection that assists the listener to understand this professional standard within the context of speech pathology practice.

Your presentation needs to be professional and engaging. Therefore, you are encouraged to utilise recording software that will allow use of visuals e.g., a PowerPoint presentation in conjunction with your face/video.

Your educational video length must be no longer than 3 minutes.

Criteria one will assess your ability to critically reflect on one element of the Professional Standards and how this standard relates to speech pathology practice. Criterion one will be worth 70% of your grade.

Criteria two will assess your communication and professionalism when developing an educational video. This includes creating an educational video which is engaging, utilises appropriate visuals and can be clearly understood. This criterion will also assess your use of grammar, punctuation and APA 7th edition referencing on the PowerPoint presentation or any other visual used in the video. Criterion two will be worth 30% of your grade. 

During your sessional placements that occur as part of this unit, you must complete a WIL Log form showing the clinical experiences/hours you accumulated across both placements. At the completion of each placement, this form must be signed by both you and your CE. You must then submit these forms via Moodle within one week of the completion of your final sessional placement. The specific record form that is to be used, and the instructions for completion will be provided to you by your Unit Coordinator at the beginning of the term.

It should be noted that Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) does not specify the number of clinical hours that students must complete during the course of any Australian university’s Speech Pathology program. SPA instead places the focus on the minimum level of competence, skills and knowledge required for entry into the workforce as a qualified and competent speech pathologist. CQUniversity’s approach is consistent with SPA’s philosophy and therefore does not have a specific requirement regarding the minimum number of clinical hours each student must complete by the end of the Speech Pathology course. Submission of the record form for this unit is therefore a pass/fail assessment requirement. You should be aware that you are also expected to track this data and keep copies for your own records, as evidence of clinical hours may be required if you are requested to provide evidence of clinical experience when applying for work as a speech pathologist overseas.

In order to pass this assessment task, you must complete and submit a copy of the WIL Log form provided to you by your Unit Coordinator, within one week of completing your final placement. Instructions for completion will be available on the record form that will be provided to you at the beginning of term.