Gormley, J., McNaughton, D., & Light, J. (2023). Supporting children’s communication of choices during inpatient rehabilitation: Effects of a mobile training for health care providers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 32(2), 545–564. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_AJSLP-22-00200
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Background
Children with complex medical and communication needs often experience extensive or frequent hospital stays and rely on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategies to communicate in this environment. In order for these AAC strategies to be successfully implemented, providers need the skills for successful implementation. Health care providers seldom receive training to effectively communicate with these children, which may lead to limited participation opportunities for the child during inpatient interactions.
Findings
Following the training, (a) more providers offered choices to the children during hospital routines, (b) providers implemented the trained procedure with increased accuracy, and (c) the children with complex communication needs consistently communicated their choices when given the opportunity to do so. The providers rated the training as easy to use, effective, and suited to the needs of the inpatient setting.
Conclusions
This is the first AAC training designed to promote child–provider interactions in inpatient settings that demonstrates results that are efficient, socially valid, and effective in a real-world context. Future work is needed to develop additional brief and focused AAC partner trainings to teach providers to support the participation of children with complex communication needs in health care interactions.
Findings from this study suggest that a mobile training can teach providers to offer choices when interacting with children who have complex communication needs in naturally occurring inpatient interactions.
Gormley et al., 2023
