Background & Aim: Clinical competency guidelines promote optimal and safe standard-of-care. Whilst nationally agreed clinical competencies are available for Burn Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists, none exist for Speech-Language-Pathologists (SLPs). Therefore, we aimed to develop a burn SLP competency tool.
Methods: Spearheaded by the American-Burn-Association (ABA) Rehabilitation Committee, a group of recognised burn SLPs and Burn Certified Therapists used a staged approach to (1) synthesize current national and international practice guidelines, (2) employ modified Delphi methodology, and (3) expert consensus meetings, to develop and refine a burn SLP competency tool. The ABA Burn Rehabilitation Therapists Competency Tool (Version 2), was used as a framework.
Results: Eighteen expert multidisciplinary burn clinicians across 14 burn centres, representing three countries developed and refined the burn SLP competency tool. A steering committee (five SLPs, one burn physiatrist) identified 103 competency statements across 15 core clinical domains. These were presented across three rounds of Delphi survey and consensus meetings. The tool was refined, statements and domains revised, merged and/or new items created. The final tool comprises 17 domains (containing 81 knowledge and application competency statements) tailored to the burn SLP for adult and paediatric populations, across the continuum of care. The tool presents two tiered levels of expertise: Level 1: minimum level of specialist skill required to manage a severe burn patient, Level 2: expert level of specialist skill and recognized resource to other SLPs.
Conclusion: This competency tool is the first nationally accepted standard-of-care for burn SLPs, providing a guideline in managing burn patients throughout the acute and rehabilitative care continuum.