Speech Language Pathologist Research Paper

Many children and adults at some point in their life require therapy from a speech language pathologist (SLP). Debra Edgar states that the 24th Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act implies that “speech or language impairment was the most prevalent disability category” (par. 3). Speech or language impairment is becoming more frequent and the need for speech-language pathologists is growing. There are many concerns about the lack of speech-language pathologist and this all revolves around what people know about this type of therapy. The fact that communication disorders are “among the most common type of disabilities in the United States”, the knowledge people have of the profession needs …show more content…
With not enough students taking this career path, it has caused a shortage of SLPs. Larissa Stone and Mark W. Pellowski found that the demand for speech- language pathologist (SLPs) is increasing at a faster rate through the year 2020 (par. 1). With not enough students deciding to take this career path, it is one of the main reasons for the shortage of SLPs. Research has been done to see what the main reasons are for students choosing speech as a career and why students may not choose this certain career. Students choose speech as a career because of “personal exposure from an individual exhibiting a communication disorder (CD) and/or knowing a student or professional in the field” were reasons why students knew what speech was and why they decided to go down that career path (Stone, Pellowiski par. 4). A survey was done by Stone and Pellowski found that “21% of participants had specified that personal experience with CSs affected their decisions to enter the field” (par.3). Also, a question that they asked in the survey was “where they first learned about the major of speech-language pathology” and the majority of people, which was 27%, answered that they know a speech-language pathologist. The main reasons for students going down this career path is due to the personal connection with speech. Researchers wanted to see what the cause of these …show more content…
These recruitment efforts are in attempt to increase the exposure of this profession and hope to learn what types of students are picking speech pathology as their career. In effort to increase the growth of the recruitment, we should first understand why a student might choose this profession over another and what a person can do to make them think differently. What they found was the “majority of students in the current field are those committed to working in a helping profession, and attempts to increase exposure among these individuals could be beneficial to future recruitment efforts” (Stone par. 40). There are students out there that could possibly end up enjoying speech if the therapy was more well-known. What was also said that wasn’t shocking was the fact that students “do not consider speech-language pathology as a career choice because they do not know about it,” this could be due to the lack of exposure to this profession (Stone par. 40). If student who are involved with nursing, other types of therapies, or special education majors knew about speech pathology before deciding their career, speech could have been a option for them. What was considered was if a person never had firsthand experience with a speech-language pathologist, then their chances of choosing that career path is slim. Even the knowledge a person has of speech is small if they never