Speech Pathology tele-practice was the right call

Dr Lucy Bryant has always had a penchant for technology. Growing up in a rural area, she was interested in the opportunities the internet opened up. So, setting up and managing the UTS student-led tele-practice clinic was a natural fit for the speech pathologist, UTS lecturer and early career researcher. Lucy said “I’ve always enjoyed the puzzle of technology and being able to get it to work for me and for others, since a lot of technology helps us to connect with loved ones and friends, and to communicate.”

The SPROUTS clinic, for Speech Pathology Reaching Out at UTS enabled Lucy to ensure that students in the clinic have the vital skills in using technology and that clients have better access to speech pathology services. The SPROUTS clinic first opened in August 2019 to link in to schools and provide services to children in Mudgee, Oberon, and Hargraves in rural NSW, where Lucy grew up. “The children showed fantastic improvements in their speech and language and our UTS Speech Pathology students benefitted from a valuable clinical placement early in their course.”

Lucy builds on her knowledge of what goes wrong in technology as much as her interest. “In the past, I think it’s been a really big barrier to more widespread use of technology that when something went wrong, many just gave up in frustration. Our students are really developing skills in being able to use technology in their practice and to troubleshoot, manage and be resilient in their use of technology – to keep at it and make sure it works for the client.”

Our students are really developing skills in being able to use technology in their practice and to troubleshoot, manage and be resilient in their use of technology – to keep at it and make sure it works for the client.

Lucy Bryant
Lecturer, Speech Pathology

The communication skills that you develop from the tele-practice clinic are different to those for a face-to-face placement.

“The students are developing this higher level of communication skill in talking to their clients online. They’ve been able to manage assessing and treating clients remotely, rather than being in person face-to-face to explain and show things – it takes a lot of creative thinking at times.”

Unexpectedly, the tele-practice clinic been an education beyond borders and institutions. Lucy says that “just before COVID-19 hit, SPROUTS expanded to provide services to adults. In this case, our student placements were pandemic-proof before they even needed to be. Being able to swiftly run our services online didn’t just help our students and clients, it also helped us to pull together across the disciplines at UTS. With colleagues in the Faculty of Law and The Business School we’ve been able to train people all over the world in how to rapidly implement tele-practice in the face of COVID-19.”

Lucy and her colleagues have had over 600 people from a dozen countries attend their tele-practice webinars.

“Having set up our SPROUTS tele-practice service prior to COVID-19, we’ve been really well placed to assist all of our colleagues globally, in being able to transform their practices and enable them to continue to provide services during restrictions. We’ve taught people the practicalities and basic skills to get online and work with their clients.”

Especially after the push from the pandemic, it’s clear that these modes of working are going to become a bigger part of health professions.

“Technology is a bigger part of how we work in society, not just in speech pathology, but in every health discipline and in every career. It’s really important that we are future-proofing our profession and giving our graduates the skills to be able to manage change and evolve. It can only help clients, and will help drive future developments in technology as more challenges come along.”

Learn more about Speech Pathology at the Graduate School of Health.