University of Maryland Hosts Interprofessional Practice Event for AuD and SLP Students

On November 16, 2017, the University of Maryland’s NSSHLA and SAA chapters hosted an interprofessional practice (IPP) event. The event, “How Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists Work Together in the Real World,” welcomed over 50 undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members, and related professionals to learn about the working relationship between speech-language pathologists and audiologists from a group of panelists.

The event featured Jennifer Lightfoot, AuD, CCC-A, FAAA and Tara Forkey, MS, CCC-SLP from the Kendall Elementary School at Gallaudet University; Kelly King, AuD, PhD from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD); and Dana Kilonsky, MA, CCC-SLP from Johns Hopkins Hospital. The panelists focused on the working relationship between speech-language pathologists and audiologists, the roles and responsibilities of healthcare professionals on an interprofessional healthcare team, the barriers to interprofessional practice in their respective settings, and how patients and their families benefit from this collaborative approach.

The IPP event emphasized the importance of establishing strong working relationships between speech-language pathologists and audiologists, as well as other healthcare and related professionals to provide the highest quality of service-provision possible. As a result, the attendees learned about how to implement IPP into their future clinical practice, whether that is in a medical or educational setting. The event further demonstrated the need to implement education and training in IPP to develop clinical competence for future clinicians in speech-language pathology and audiology graduate programs.

NSSHLA and SAA hope to host a similar event next year to further expand the working knowledge about interprofessional practice between speech-language pathologists and audiologists and their healthcare professionals in a variety of settings.