Tweetchat: 'That doesn't translate’ - the role of evidence-based practice in disempowering speech pathologists in acute aphasia management

Our seventh Tweetchat 'That doesn't translate’: the role of evidence-based practice in disempowering speech pathologists in acute aphasia management’ took place on Wednesday 27th July.

We were delighted by the reach of the chat, hosted by Dr Hazel Roddam, with 37 participants sending 251 tweets that were delivered to 126,391 linked accounts.

Thank you to everyone who contributed and followed the chat. Participants included SLTs from across the UK and in Australia as well as other AHPs.

We know that people from other EU countries were also watching the conversation. We were particularly delighted that a number of people joined the Tweetchat for the first time – hope you enjoyed it!

The paper reports an exploratory study of speech and language therapists working in Australia with patients who have acute aphasia and it uncovered some startling insights into the direct impact of professionals' values and attitudes on their clinical practice.

The SLTs in this study reported feeling so overwhelmed by the published research literature that this generated a resistance to reading or applying any of the evidence.

This sense that the principles of EBP effectively made the clinicians feel disempowered needs to be urgently addressed in pre-registration clinical education, as well as through continuing education with qualified clinicians.

There also remains a challenging question of whether these same findings would be generated with groups of SLTs working with other clinical populations, or in other countries? And to what extent these themes may be identified within other groups of AHPs?

We began the chat by discussing that up until now most published reports indicated that SLTs and other healthcare professionals stated positive attitudes to EBP.

This is an important paper because it reveals deeper insights into alternative perspectives of EBP. This matches with a recent survey of UK SLT's conducted by the RCSLT.

Many of our Tweetchat participants agreed that these findings matched with their own experiences. A discussion took place about implications of this for pre and post qualification training.

Some interesting conversations were started about comparisons in EBP teaching in Australia and the UK.

Many people suggested that an important way forward is for clinical therapists to work together with academics in practice based and practice led research.

We also need to understand better the importance of implementation research designs and strategies that can more effectively support embedding of EBP in clinical practice.

The chat was based around this article - we would like to thank @IJLDC for making this paper open access for the next four weeks from the date of the Tweetchat.

You can find the pre-chat information and questions here.

The transcript can be found here and the stats/analytics are here.

Suggested reading/further references

Fostering implementation of health services research findings into practice: a consolidated framework for advancing implementation science.

Knowledge Translation in Health Care: Moving from Evidence to Practice.

National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (2010). Ottawa Model of Research Use: A Framework for Adopting Innovations. Hamilton, ON: McMaster University. (Updated 30 August, 2010).