Valuing Professional Development

I spend a lot of my time thinking about the schools and children we work with, though what is equally important is a focus on our team of speech and language therapists.

Here at LINGO, we have a very wonderful team of speech and language therapists – we are a small but powerful group who are passionate about supporting the children and young people we have the privilege of working with. I’m now in my 40^th year of being a speech and language therapist and feel part of my role is to support the growth of excellent speech and language therapists who will continue to advocate and make a difference for children with SLCN long after my career comes to a close.

One of the ways we attempt to do this is by supporting lifelong learning and the professional development of our team.

Why is CPD important?

At its foundation, CPD ensures our practice is safe and effective, though it does much more than that. Done well, our CPD can help us apply new evidence into practice, improving outcomes for the children and young people we work with. It can enhance our clinical skills and support us to share those skills and experiences with colleagues, building a strong community of practice.

It can build our confidence as therapists and in a safe environment allow us to share our insecurities, reinforce our knowledge and help us to identify and to fill any gaps in knowledge and skills in a rapidly changing field of practice. It can also help hone vital reflection skills, allowing us to reflect and refine our work on a daily basis, again enhancing practice.

We can also just share good ideas, ask questions, talk to peers about a great website, resource or piece of research we have found; building reciprocal support within the team.

Guidance

Our professional body, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT), gives lots of guidance around what constitutes CPD and how much time we should be allocating to this as professionals. Often when people think about CPD, they think about courses or conferences they might attend, though we know CPD is much broader than this; it can include:

• Work based learning, such as reflective practice, case studies, shadowing colleagues or other professionals, peer review or discussion with others, the list goes on…

• Professional activities, such as mentoring, training or teaching others, getting involved in activities linked to our professional bodies, becoming a clinical educator to support up and coming student SLTs.

• Formal / Educational activities, such as attending courses, or further study, taking part in research, planning or running our own courses, writing or submitting articles.

• Self directed learning, such as listening to podcasts, reading journal articles or reviewing books/articles

We can also take part in other activities, such as volunteering which support our professional learning.

For my part, I think I have learned the most through working with others; taking the perspective of other professionals, seeing things from a different view, working with parents and young people have all improved my knowledge and skills – basically lots of work based learning, with a huge chunk of reflection, to capture my own activity and analyse how it lands, then refining practice – what will I do differently next time. We have to learn to do this with both a critical eye and a kind approach. It’s not about beating ourselves up if we don’t quite get it right, but reflecting on what could make it better next time.

Our CPD

Our team spend the majority of time out and about in schools and settings, working with children and young people. However, we make regular protected time for continuing professional development, so every fortnight we have a day when we come together as a team. This day is for our professional learning, our CPD.

In our regular day together, we do a range of CPD activities, including peer supervision where we come together as a team around a whole range of topics, from clinical approaches through to service delivery and everything in between.

Last week was the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) CPD week. As speech and language therapists we are all members of the HCPC which amongst other things gives us our license to practice and encourages continuous professional development of members.

In recognition of HCPC week, we did a review of our current CPD practices. The team were asked to share some words they associated with their professional learning. Mostly the words were positive, though it was acknowledged that CPD can be time consuming and sometimes a little overwhelming.

We also asked people to share two other things, their best CPD experience this year and their CPD top tips:

Best CPD experience included things like:

• Opportunities to deliver staff training

• Insightful discussions as part of the secondary school meetings

• RCSLT online conference to mark the 80th year

• Developing clinical skills through reflective practice and case discussions with my supervisor

• Mentoring a student gave me chance to reflect on my practice and articulate my clinical reasoning.

• Carving out the time to really focus on my learning and reflecting on how far I have come.

• Discussions on office days - helpful to get different people's experiences and opinions.

• Having a student on placement and realising just how much I have learnt since qualifying.

• Training SENDCo and LSA's with lots of discussion and input from the team

• Joint working with NHS SLT for a classroom audit. Useful to share observations and discuss strategies.

• Discussing case studies together during peer support meetings.

Top CPD Tips included things like:

• Be open minded and analytical of research

• Keep a folder/document of interesting articles, websites, courses (as you find them) that you can come back to when you have the time!

• Signing up to newsletters via email (and dedicating time to read)

• Actively reflect on learning and apply it to day to day practice.

• Plan in specific time on the calendar and be specific about what.

• Think about different places to find CPD opportunities. Sometimes organisations will put things on social media or advertise in other platforms such as Eventbrite.

• Set allocated time weekly - use it on real life cases

• CPD takes so many forms: learning from colleagues, reading, watching videos, reflecting in supervision sessions. We probably do it way more than we even realise

• Plan what CPD activity you will be doing before the office day.

• Reflect on your learning. Think about what was useful and what wasn't useful and why. It makes it easier to apply what you've learnt in clinical practice.

• Ask people for support, e.g. with cases.

• Reflect on everyday activities to pick out things that support CPD.

• More things count as CPD than you think - we actually do it ALL the time!

We employ a lot of therapists new to the profession as well as those with more experience. One of the joys of my job is the pleasure I get from seeing their growth.

We’d love to hear how you support your own and others’ professional development. Sharing practice is just another way to learn after all!