Welcome to The Reflective SLP!

As you begin your journey toward becoming a speech-language pathologist (SLP), you are constantly developing the technical skills and theoretical knowledge essential for effective clinical provision. But there's another critical component that will shape your success as a clinician: the ability to think reflectively about your practice.

Why This Course Matters:

Reflective practice is recognized as a professional standard across healthcare disciplines, including speech-language pathology. When clinicians engage in thoughtful reflection, they make more informed clinical decisions, provide more responsive patient care, and continue to grow throughout their careers. Many SLP graduate programs excel at building technical competencies, but find that helping students develop reflective thinking skills to be more nebulous.

This gap between building technical skills and building reflective skills matters more than you might think. Learning to be self-curious and self-critical through reflection helps SLPs improve their clinical decision-making, connect theory with practice, respond effectively to cultural differences, and recognize when their approaches need adjustment to better meet client needs. Without these reflective skills, patient care can suffer, and clinicians may struggle with the complex problem-solving that is ubiquitous in clinical work.

The stakes extend beyond individual client interactions. Our field is currently facing high attrition rates, with up to half of practicing SLPs experiencing burnout. Research shows that engaging in reflective practice helps build the professional resilience needed to thrive in this demanding but rewarding field. By encouraging self-awareness, focus on connection to others, and fostering a growth mindset, reflective practice equips clinicians to adapt and persevere. 

What You'll Gain:

This course will provide you with structured frameworks to examine your clinical decisions, recognize patterns in treatment challenges, and develop the self-awareness needed for career-long professional development. Rather than leaving reflection to chance, you'll learn systematic approaches that you can carry with confidence into your clinical rotations and beyond, setting the foundation for a fulfilling, sustainable career in speech-language pathology.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will approach reflective practice as a foundational professional competency, emphasizing systematic frameworks for clinical thinking and lifelong learning.

It will present an overview of introductory material on:

1.The foundations and theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice, including the evidence base supporting its use in speech-language pathology;

2. Self-awareness and professional identity development, including personal strengths and values assessment, bias recognition, and cultural humility in clinical practice;

3. Clinical reasoning models and reflective questioning techniques for enhancing problem-solving, managing clinical uncertainty, and connecting theory to practice;

4. Reflective communication in professional relationships, including applications to clinical supervision and mentorship, difficult conversations and conflict, and collaborative practice;

5. Strategies for sustaining reflective practice throughout your career, including personal development planning, building reflective habits, safeguarding against burnout, and creating personal accountability;

Throughout the modules, you will see reflection represented in real-world clinical situations, engage in structured reflection protocols, and develop personalized tools for ongoing professional growth. The course emphasizes practical skill-building through guided practice, self-monitoring exercises, and the creation of sustainable reflection habits that can be immediately applied in clinical training settings.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After successfully completing this course, you will be able to:

1. Define and articulate the core principles of reflective practice and explain its role in evidence-based speech-language pathology practice and professional development. 

2. Apply systematic frameworks for clinical reflection to analyze clinical scenarios, personal learning experiences, and professional situations. 

3. Demonstrate self-awareness of personal clinical strengths, learning needs, professional values, and potential biases through structured self-assessment and reflective analysis. 

4. Examine clinical cases and professional situations from multiple perspectives using reflective questioning techniques to identify alternative approaches and contextual factors. 

5. Develop personalized strategies for sustaining reflective habits throughout clinical training and into your career to support lifelong learning and resilience.