University of Montana graduate students – four drawn from the School of Speech, Language, Hearing & Occupational Sciences within the University’s College of Health, plus two drawn from the Department of Counselling within the College of Education – collaborated in running an interprofessional telehealth counselling and wellness group. The activities for this telehealth group were jointly developed by faculties from the two disciplines, with the goal of supporting people with aphasia (PWA) in leading healthy and fulfilling lives. This Aphasiology article reports the perspectives of those involved in the counseling and wellness activities – that is, the stroke survivors living with aphasia, and the graduate students providing them clinical services.
Seven interviewees were drawn from the University of Montana’s Summer 2020 telehealth Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Program, one component of which was this interdisciplinary telehealth wellness and counselling program. These interviewees comprised five stroke survivors living with aphasia, and one graduate student each from speech-language pathology and from counselling. The latter two also participated in an Interprofessional Group, which brought together service providers across disciplines to discuss Aphasia Communities. The seven interviewees met weekly in focus groups to share their perspectives and reflections on experiences in these programs. Content analysis procedures were applied to verbatim transcripts of focus group discussions, in order to identify main themes from the focus groups.
For participating PWA, several main themes emerged. For instance, PWA wanted fewer information topics per group session, greater simplification of information provided, and more time to discuss information, to practice communication skills, and to interact socially. For the graduate student clinical providers, their main themes identified mutual benefits from interacting with professionals from other disciplines, and improvements in skills, knowledge, and attitudes derived from cross-disciplinary collaboration and communication.
The introduction of the previously mentioned Interprofessional Group represented an innovation at this intensive summer program. By joining graduate students from complementary disciplines, the Interprofessional Group promoted discussion of perspectives on how best to serve the needs of PWA participants. These interdisciplinary discussions refined understandings of how interprofessional collaboration for service delivery improves PWA experiences.
For further reading: H. Kincheloe, C. Off, M. Murphy et al., 2021, “We all have coping and communication problems”. Experiences of stroke survivors living with aphasia and graduate student clinicians who participated in a telehealth interprofessional psychoeducation and wellness group. Aphasiology, https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2021.2020716