The paper for this month’s #ReSNetSLT tweetchat journal club on Weds 29th April 2020 is based on research carried out by the first author Helen Cameron, for her postgraduate dissertation.
The topic is Autism as we are supporting Autism Awareness (30th March – 5th April), and this theme is also the RCSLT‘s theme this month as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations.
Everyone can access an ‘accepted manuscript’ copy of the article through Researchgate here.
Members of RCSLT can also access the full article for a limited time thanks to the publishers Taylor and Francis. Log in the members’ area, then the journals A-Z page.
- Select any journal which is published by Taylor and Francis (T & F) e.g. Acta Oto-Laryngologica.
- When you are brought to this journal’s home page you can enter “Recognising autism spectrum disorders” into the search bar on the top middle of the page. Change the dropdown entry to ‘Anywhere’
- The first entry on the results page will be the article and it will show a green tick to show it is open access.
Helen completed this small-scale qualitative research project alongside her full-time clinical role as speech and language therapist in the Republic of Ireland.
This was Helen’s first experience of disseminating research findings in a peer-reviewed journal. Following her MSc, Helen moved from Ireland to pursue a PhD in the UK.
This paper explores speech and language therapists’ experiences of identifying children in their practice who may require onward referral for diagnostic assessment of autism.
It is acknowledged that community-based professionals are often positioned to recognise features of autism in children and that such professionals are important for timely diagnosis.
However, little is known about how health professionals such as speech and language therapists perceive their role in this early stage of the autism identification journey.
The paper reports that therapists were concerned with two key events: accurately identifying children requiring further diagnostic assessment and discussing onward referral with parents/carers.
Therapists’ experiences of these events were influenced by individual factors such as their own prior experience, and wider organisational factors such as resources and processes.
Our #ReSNetSLT Tweetchat will continue the discussions about healthcare research and clinical academic roles from previous chats.
It will particularly focus on dissemination of research i.e. how we share the findings of research with the people who can make use of it.
The discussion will encompass all the various research activities which therapists may be engaged in e.g. dissertations, service audits, quality improvement projects, and all the various ways we might share our findings e.g. peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, public engagement events.
The questions to structure our discussion:
- How closely do the paper findings match experiences of you and your colleagues in referring children on for ASD diagnosis?
- What experiences have you had in disseminating findings from student research projects?
- Even relatively small scale projects can have clinical relevance and value – how can we know what impact our research has had?
- This research study was conducted in Ireland. What can we learn from research conducted in international healthcare contexts?