Associate Professor in the School of Communication Science and Disorders, Dr. Kelly Farquharson, was recently awarded the 2020 ASHA Award for Meritorious Poster Submission. The winning proposal, entitled “Speech-Language Pathologist Perceptions of Interprofessional Collaborative Practices” was one of 57 poster submissions chosen for meritorious recognition out of 1,531 submissions total.
ASHA, or the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, is a national organization consisting of accredited speech-language pathology (SLP) professionals. Their mission is “making effective communication, a human right, accessible and achievable for all.” As such, the annual ASHA Awards aim to recognize the achievements made by individuals and groups within the industry.
The Meritorious Poster Submission category is reserved for proposals deemed “extraordinary, exceptional, and innovative” by a select Convention Program Committee. This committee consists of a group of nine ASHA fellows who are tasked with recommending commendable posters for this distinction. Dr. Farquharson’s poster was among the few selected, scoring top points across both categories of professional education and research.
This recognition comes as a great honor to Dr. Farquharson and she is proud of the students who helped make it happen. “Getting students involved in research is a real passion of mine, so I’m thrilled to have been able to be a part of this student-led multi-disciplinary collaboration,” she says.
The primary interest fueling the poster’s creation was an expansion on previous research on Interprofessional Practice and Education such that it might include SLP-specific perspectives. To accomplish this, the team implemented a survey targeted at Speech Language Pathologists working in clinical environments. The survey posed specific questions that gauged SLP’s perspectives and unique experiences with interprofessional collaboration.
This award-winning submission comes as a collaborative effort between speech-language pathology and athletic training researchers at FSU, Duquesne University, and Ball State University. Master’s student, Nicole Purwin, and junior, Maryann Berdik, both students at Duquesne University, spearheaded the project.
The primary interest fueling the poster’s creation was an expansion on previous research on Interprofessional Practice and Education such that it might include SLP-specific perspectives. To accomplish this, the team implemented a survey targeted at Speech Language Pathologists working in clinical environments. The survey posed specific questions that gauged SLP’s perspectives and unique experiences with interprofessional collaboration.
Being as Dr. Farquharson’s primary area of expertise is school-based SLP practice, her role in this project was to oversee the creation of the survey’s questions. The team wanted to ensure the questions would be easily understood by school-based clinicians. She has acted as a bridge between SLP’s in both educational and clinical settings by helping to ensure overall coherent research results. Now that the project is in the manuscript phase, she is currently working on drafting the discussion portion of the paper.