mortiz058

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 fee...

Our sixth #ResNetSLT Tweetchat 'Are your treatment decisions evidence or craft-based?' took place on Wednesday 29th June. Hosted by Mark Jayes  and Dr Emma Pagnamenta  the chat was based around this article . You can find the pre-chat information and questions here . It was another lively chat with 28 participants, 268 tweets and a potential reach of 171,046. Thank you to everyone who contributed and followed the discussion. The inspiration for the chat came from a study carried out by McCurtin & Clifford in 2015 who asked SLTs in Ireland about how they make treatment decisions. Current understanding of EBP suggests we make decisions using evidence from four sources: i) research; ii) practice - our own and our colleagues' clinical experience; iii) individual patient characteristics; iv) contextual information. The survey results suggested that the SLTs who responded make treatment decisions using evidence from two main sources: clinical experience (e.g. 'craft'...

Our fifth Tweetchat 'So good to be involved: PPI in research' took place on Wednesday 25th May. We were delighted by the reach of the chat, hosted by Dr Rebecca Palmer and Dr Emma Pagnamenta , with 37 participants sending 482 tweets that were delivered to 728,787 linked accounts. We were particularly pleased by the interdisciplinary nature of the chat and the involvement of #whywedoresearch . Thank you to everyone who contributed and followed the chat. Patient and public involvement (PPI) is promoted at all stages of research, with everyone having a right to be involved. However, the high level of communication skills often required precludes the involvement of people with communication difficulties. We began the chat by sharing examples of how patients/service users are being involved in research. Many different ways of involving patients and the public were shared. These ranged from advisory groups, inputting to study materials, giving research ideas, using video conversatio...

Our fourth #ResNetSLT Twitter journal club took place on Wednesday, 27th April, 2016. It proved to be another lively discussion with 15 participants, 135 tweets and a potential reach of 133,000. This is such an important topic if we are to sustain health and the wider care system whilst managing demand, because staffing resource is the largest cost to any service delivery and is becoming increasingly scrutinised. Having tools to evidence workload demand and capacity, and to profile workforce requirements, are vital for quality care. In the Tweetchat the challenges we all face in clinical services were discussed, and experiences of approaches and processes for workforce planning were shared which included, surveys, time and motion/diary tools, point prevalence studies and manual counting. One of the greatest points of discussion was the challenges agreeing a minimum data set to enable consistent and comparable measurement/benchmarking. Participants shared experience of self-creating st...

Our third #ResNetSLT Twitter journal club took place on Wednesday, 30th March, 2016. It proved to be another lively discussion – thanks to all who joined in, especially those who are very new to Tweetchatting. The chat was based around this article . Chaired by Joanne Fillingham the chat featured the three paper authors – Hazel Roddam , Sarah Edney  and Heulwen Sheldrick . This paper illustrates the process of reviewing the available evidence base. In this case the clinical population comprises people with Parkinson's Disease (PD) who have swallowing difficulties and was prompted by a genuine real-world clinical dilemma: What is the best case management for my patients? Why does the accepted management seem to be limited to only compensatory approaches when there is at least some published evidence for more active rehabilitation strategies? You can find the pre-chat information and questions here . In the Tweetchat we broadened the discussion to consider the processes of undertak...

Our second #ResNetSLT Twitter Journal Club took place on Wednesday, 24th February, 2016. It proved to be another lively discussion – but at the same time we hope it felt very welcoming and a comfortable experience for those who are new to Tweetchatting. Our stats showed the hour generated 271 tweets from 34 participants, with possibly a few more watching our discussions from the sidelines. The combined potential impressions on Twitter totalled 295,546, which is a really powerful reach. We emphasised that everyone is most welcome to join us, and we were very pleased to see that we again had a range of AHP professionals engaging in our chat. Of course, distance is no barrier – that is the value of our virtual online community and we really hope to continue to hear more voices from across mainland EU in the months ahead. Please click here to see the detailed analysis of the Tweetchat. We were also delighted to be awarded the Speechwoman SLT site of the month by Professor Caroline Bowen...

Thanks for this accolade for #ResNetSLT from Professor Caroline Bowen - we are delighted (please click here for Caroline's website). We have lots more plans so please watch this space. Please could we also ask people to spread the word that we welcome everyone to join in with #ResNetSLT - discipline and distance is no problem at all.