Your main contacts as Practice Educators will be:

• Helen Nazlie Director of Clinical Education Phone: 0191 208 8763
• Carol Moxam Clinical Coordinator  Phone: 0191 208 5890
• Beth Davidson Clinical secretary Phone: 0191 208 7385

N.B: Due to the current pandemic staff are not accessible via telephone. Please contact staff via email in the first instance. 

Here are the dates for all of the clinical placements this academic year (2019/20) including those that take place on campus. Please select a placement type for more information about specific placements.

Semester 1 2020/21

Semester 2 2020/21

Semester 3 2020/21

‌This section contains the programme of workshops for this academic year:

Please be advised that for Academic Year 2020/21 dates for Workshops are still TBC and will be circulated through CCC reps.

All workshops will be taking place online until further notice.

‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌The General Placement Handbook is relevant to every placement and contains essential information for all Clinical Educators.

• General Practice Educator Placement Handbook‌

The Placement Specific Packs contain information about each placement, including expectations and assessment.You will be emailed a copy of the pack relevant to your placement.‌

• BSc4 Prof Contexts Placement Specific Pack 2020/21‌
• MSc2 Extended Case Placement Specific Pack 2020/21

• BSc3 Semester 2 Block Placement
• BSc4 Semester 2 Block Placement
• MSc1 Semester 3 Block Placement
• MSc2 Semester 3 Block Placement

‌‌‌‌These are the competency based assessments for each of the placements. Please save a copy of the CER onto your computer. You may find it easier to ask the student to complete their comments and email the CER to you so that you can complete your comments in detail before meeting with the student for their final evaluation. This is particularly useful if more than one CE is involved. Please read the instructions carefully before completing the CER. Completed CERs should be posted to the University as soon as possible after the placement finishes. Each year has the same CER for both placements, with some placements having additional competencies. If you have any queries please contact Beth Davidson.

You may find it helpful to refer to the helpful hints for completing the clinical evaluation report

• BSc Stage 3 Clinical Evaluation Report
• BSc Stage 4 Clinical Evaluation Report
• MSc1 Clinical Evaluation Report: External Placements‌
• MSc Stage 2 Clinical Evaluation Report: External Placements

Instead of having one or two students working individually with clients you may find it more interesting, helpful or even fun, to havestudents on a peer placement or a whole group of students all at once. These documents give you more information about peer placements and satellite clinics. We are keen for CEs to take up these options as it an be rewarding for both CE and student as well as being a way of efficiently supervising a larger number of students on placement. We can provide CE workshops in the summer for any Services or groups of CEs who are interested. Please contact Beth Davidson for more information.

• Peer Placements
• Satellite Clinics 

‌The documents contained here provide guidance of various aspects of placements for clincial educators and students.

• Helpful hints for the CER
• Helpful hints for Interprofessional learning and working on placement

‌‌‌‌‌‌The documents here are policy documents and guidelines relevant to Speech and Language Sciences clinical placements.

• Current SLS Policy on Clinical Fails
• Current SLS DBS Policy‌
• Current Dress Code for Clinical Placements‌‌
• Current Raising Concerns‌
• Current SLS Fitness to Practice‌
• Current SLS Health & Safety Policy
• Current Personal Clinical Goals‌

‌‌‌‌Here are copies of the student guides to clinical education that students are given at the start of each academic year which contains information about the relevant clinical and professional education module. They are useful points of reference for you as they outline the information about placements that we provide for students. Stage 4 are the final cohort of the current programme, and the last to receive a 'rough guide.' ‌All other stages will receive the 'student placement handbook.'

• BSc4 rough guide
• ‌Student Handbook

During their time at University students engage in a number of different projects, ranging from presenting professional issues seminars, to completing audit or service evaluation for SLTs, to undertaking research projects under the supervision of academic staff (sometimes co-supervised by SLTs). The marks of all of these projects contribute towards the students' final degree.

Professional Issues Topics

These topics are researched by BSc4 students and presented in interactive seminars either by groups or individuals. Topics have included:

• Transforming Care for people with learning disabilities
• The Autism Act 10 Years On
• Education, Health and Care Plans
• The role of the SLT in the palliative care team
• Telehealth and digital health in SLT services
• The role of the SLT in mainstream schools

Professional Context Projects

These projects are liinked to the semester one placement. if you have an audit or small scale (non-research) project that students can undertake on your behalf, there is a PE workshop in the summer to help you develop the topic and ensure that it can be completed in the timescale. Ask your CCC rep for workshop dates or email Beth Davidson. Here are some examples of Professional Context Placement Project topics from the last few years: 

• A review of the current literature on thickener practice and case note review to establish overview of current practice in the ALD team.
• Development of a measure that evaluates functional outcomes of group treatment for people with Aphasia at the Tavistock Aphasia Centre
• Review of current literature and other services implementation of the delivery of LSVT to non-PD aetiologies within the adult population in order to help service consider possible implementation.
• The development of an assessment tool that speech and language therapists (SLT’s) can use when working with young people within the Youth Justice System.
• To develop written information to support referrers when making a referral for children 5 and under into the Speech and Language Therapy Service.
  

Dissertations

These research projects are supervised by staff in the University and entail students being involved in original research projects that have been developed by themselves or members of staff. PEs who have small scale research projects are welcome to discuss their suitability for inclusion as a dissertation topic with Nick Riches (module leader). Supervision would normally be shared with a member of University staff. The timescale for this is January of each year for topics, with students making their choices in April. If you need NHS research ethics approval (via IRAS) you will have to ensure that it is in place for the end of September when the projects start. This will mean booking in to a Research Ethics Committee in June.

Students have their first clinical practice experiences in the Tavistock Aphasia Centre Clinic and The Children's Speech and Language Therapy Clinic which are located in King George VI Building on the University Campus. Student's will spend one semester working in the adult clinic and one semester in the child clinic. This will be assessed using the CER in the same way that they would be on an external placement.

This page contains links to evidence based practice (EBP) resources for Clinical Educators. It will be updated throughout the year as new resources are developed and made available.

The necessary skills to undertake EBP e.g. critical appraisal, internet and database searching, research methodology, statistics, are taught to students throughout their degree programmes. By the end of stage 3 for the BSc programme and Semester 1 of the first year for the Msc programme, we expect all students to be able to formulate an EBP question about their clinical practice, search for relevant research literature, critically appraise that literature accurately and formulate an answer to their question that is based on the evidence and tempered by clinical judgement and client needs.

Evidence-based practice is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients, integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. Sackett et al (2000)

Unless research-based evidence and guidance is incorporated into practice, efforts to improve the quality of care will be wasted. Implementing evidence may require health professionals to change long held patterns of behaviour. (Quote from Effective Health Care FEBRUARY 1999 VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1)

This link: Glossary takes you to an excellent glossary of statistical terms and tests

More about levels of evidence at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine website. 

These short summary guides are written for students to act as a quick reminder of things they have covered in their course that are relevant to clinical work. If you have any queries or requests for further How to...Guides, please contact Helen Stringer

• How to...introduction
• How to...read casenotes
• How to...write therapy goals
• How to...write a session plan
• How to...write case notes
• How to...write a report
• How to...adapt the style of a report
• How to...have a good session
• How to...give feedback
• How to...administer a test
• How to...have a successful peer placement
• How to...judge levels of attention
• How to...measure effectiveness
• How to...talk to children
• How to...write word lists
• How to...avoid breaches of confidentiality
• How to... interpret test scores

• SPELS audit tool PP & PE
• SPELS audit tool PP & PE
• SPELS audit tool PP & PE