Mentorship Is Broken—and New SLPs Are Paying the Price
JJeanette BenigasMay 26 at 8:28 pm56min
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00:00Jeanette Benigas
Hey, fixers. I'm Dr Jeanette Benigas, the owner of Fix SLP, a grassroots advocacy firm here to challenge the status quo in speech language pathology by driving real change from insurance regulations to removing barriers that prevent full autonomy like the CCC, this podcast is your space to learn, engage and take action in the field of speech language pathology. We don't wait for change. We make it so let's fix SLP!
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00:40Jeanette Benigas
Hey
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00:46Jeanette Benigas
Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Jeanette. No Preston today. Preston, I don't know, like, let me know, like, three hours ago that he couldn't record this week - not really. He had something come up. Couldn't record. And so we had some special guests that we were planning on inviting, maybe for our summer series that we're planning right now. So I'll just say it because we're getting ready to put it out soon. Last summer, we took a break. This summer, we are going to go straight through with 12 summer episodes, and we're going to call it our summer school series. They're just going to be shorter episodes, so instead of like, 45 minutes to an hour, they're going to be 20 to 30 minutes. And we'll be bringing on guests every week to address some of the most asked questions, or some of the kinds of things we're still seeing on social media that we're still talking about. So we'll be addressing those in different ways all summer, and hopefully having some fun, because we'll be rebranding at some point, and what we were pushing our website launch back just a little bit to the end of summer school, but yeah, so we were gonna ask these two on for summer school, but Preston loses, so I have Nikki and Hylan. And what is the name of your company? I venture to say a lot of people haven't heard about it. So tell us you are, what your company is, what you do, do that, do all those things.
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02:07Hylan Noble
So I'm Hylan. I am originally from Alabama. Went to school at the University of Alabama, Roll Tide. I'm a big football, basketball, sports college fan. And after graduate school, I actually, well, I worked at Vanderbilt for a while at their treatment Research Institute for autism spectrum disorders, and that's where I fell in love with speech language pathology. And I did a lot of research, and I thought I wanted to be a developmental psychologist. And turns out that when I worked with the speech language pathologist, I was like, No way. I love all things communication, seeing these therapists be a part of this journey of communication with a family from from the beginning and along the way for those milestones, that's exactly what I want to do. So went back to graduate school, and then I moved to San Diego, so I'm currently in San Diego, and I have been in private practice ever since, and that's actually where Nikki and I met, and we were very kindred spirits. We met in a private practice and became close. And then our journey and our path took us in a really, really cool direction. So I'll let Nikki kind of take over from here.
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03:12Nikki Rosner
I'm Nikki. I am originally from Southern California. I went to San Diego State University for my undergrad and my grad program, and I'm currently in Illinois. It's very cold here. It's very different. Lived in Miami, Florida before, so we bounced all over. My husband and I, and I've been in pediatric private practice my entire career, and I love it a lot. And Hylan and I met actually in a private practice, and that's where we we just had a lot of fun within therapy together. We shared a wall we would knock back and forth with our kids. It was a lot of fun. And then we worked at a private practice, and we mentored over 24 SLPs across different states, and supervised a lot of new grads. And from there, we kind of found that we didn't see the mentorship outside of our clinic in the way that we knew it could be. And we kept getting all of the new grads come to us and they'd say, can you just talk to my friend if they just had, like, a Nikki and Hylan? If you just talk to my friend, I think you could really help. They're just really struggling, and they just wish they had a Nikki and Hylan. So from that it was just became a dream of ours to be able to create our business, the mentorship collective, and that is where we are solely helping new graduates understand how to provide therapy, how to look at the whole child. And it's not very specific to one type of therapy. It's really looking at a child and figuring out, where do you start? What do you do when you walk into a room with a family, and so we created a program on there to support you through your first years as an SLP, to really help you thrive and not burn out. And so that's where we came in with the mentorship collective, and we also have a private practice. So Hylan, I'll let you talk about that.
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05:00Jeanette Benigas
That. Wait, I have a question. Yeah, so you said you're supporting people. You said, like looking at the whole child, and what do you do? So is the mentorship collective for people in private practice? Only? Is it for people in schools in private practice, or is this also something that would benefit our med SLP new grads?
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05:21Nikki Rosner
I would say it is specifically for pediatrics. So not just private practice, not just schools, not yeah, really can go anything pediatrics. Geriatrics, is not where we where we thrive.
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05:34Jeanette Benigas
I gotta find someone like you doing this in the med SLP. So all my people are happy.
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05:39Nikki Rosner
I mean, if you find them, then send them our way, and we would love to collaborate with them. That's our dream. Is one day too.
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05:46Jeanette Benigas
I have some ideas, so I'll wrap around who I'm thinking about.
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05:49Nikki Rosner
Oh, I love this. This is so exciting. But yes, we just are very much only attuned to the pediatric population. We've worked with adults. It's just not our expertise, and we like to stay where we know we can help the most, and that is that pediatric population, and working with families, that is that tricky dynamic of being able to support families wherever they are in their journey, and not expecting them to be farther along, because we have goals.
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06:20Jeanette Benigas
Yeah, I don't know what we're about to say over the next 40 ish minutes, but I don't want our med SLPs to tune out because I have listened to your podcast. I know like the whole story you just told about yourselves. I already knew that. So I already know some of the things that I think will come out of your mouth today, and I think a lot of it in terms of being a new grad, or even supporting new grads, is applicable across the profession. So while they might not want to be a part of your collective the kinds of questions people might ask during an interview, or the things as a seasoned SLP, the type of advice I might give to a younger SLP, is very applicable. So please don't tune out. I know that you have good things to say, or else we wouldn't have asked you to come on. We're very selective. So yeah, please don't, you know, keep listening to these ladies and yeah, tell us Hylan, you I cut you off.
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07:14Hylan Noble
No, that's fine. I was going to actually add in too that I think that if you're an adult therapist, don't tune out, because if you're interested ever in coming back to the pediatric world, we have actually worked with several therapists who have decided mid career that they want to switch from adults to pediatrics, and we have been able to support them along that journey. And a lot of our programs are able to support that as well. So yeah, and we have our private practice, and that's the heart of what we do is supporting not just the child, but also the entire family, and that's a big part of what the mentorship Collective is as well, because this is a lot of information that you just don't get in graduate school. We created the mentorship collective to provide the real world, practical strategies to clinicians that you are going to face when you enter the real world, because graduate school is the theory. But when you get but you're not getting that practical, this is what you need to expect. So everything from you know, how to organize your time, documentation, parent coaching, how to take feedback, difficult conversations. How do you collaborate with other professionals that you may or may not even agree with, you know, those soft skills that we take, what one course, maybe in grad school, in terms of professional development, and that is a lot of our job. And especially in pediatrics, you're going to be collaborating oftentimes with a lot of people that you may not see eye to eye with, and it takes a village. And so we saw this space for supporting new graduates in helping them navigate this territory and understand it. Because, like Nikki said, we would often get messages from our former new grads that we worked with, or other clinicians we supervise that would take jobs at their places after, you know, working with us, say they moved or whatever happened, and they would say, Wow, we are so glad that we were able to work with you, because we are now prepared with all of these different skill sets that we didn't even know we were going to need. And we're seeing our colleagues kind of, kind of having a hard time and struggling imposter syndrome every you know, just the soft skills counseling, you name it. That is what our that's why we created the mentorship collective, because we are passionate about supporting that, and our private practice supports that as well. So they go hand in hand in terms of what we stand for and what we want to provide to the SLP community.
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09:31Hylan Noble
to provide to the SLP community.
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09:33Jeanette Benigas
Yeah, I love that. So before we really jump into some new graduate specific information, what I just want to find and lay out for everyone is at Fix SLP, obviously, what we're fighting for is autonomy and choice. And so while everyone on our team has some personal opinions when it comes to the CCC, we are all on this same page that everyone needs to have a choice, which means removing ASHA language from state licensure and state licensure requirements and job postings. And so one of the things that we're all often very careful of is not using the word CF or certified fellow, because that is ASHA branded language. There are many states that call it something different, not all states. Some states just say you have to do the CF, but what they're pointing towards is ASHA. And so what we'd like to see is that change. Can the state say exactly what they want. And we would challenge those states to make it a little harder? So if you've been around for any length of time in Ohio, ours is a little harder because our new grad experience. And I forget what the name of it is, and at the moment in Ohio, but it's not CF, it requires more face to face in every third. So with the CF, it's like one supervised experience every third. And across Ohio's new graduate program, you end up with 18 interactions, and it's still not enough. But what I think it does is it's really good at addressing some of the concerns that you guys might jump into where where people feel largely under prepared. And so at least Ohio has taken a step towards addressing that in a way that really makes your mentor interact with you every couple of weeks. And I'm really proud of that. And it's been like that for a long time. It was like that one I went through however many years ago. But I think it's a great thing. So we're challenging states and our state teams to take a look at that and really define what it is that they want make it harder to address some of these concerns that new grads are having. So for that reason at Fix SLP, you'll often hear us or see us say new grad instead of CF, and nine month supervision experience instead of the CF. Why? And I'll just say too that not every state. North Dakota does not currently have a nine month supervision period. They don't require the CF, they don't have that. Virginia's is only six months. So I've heard the ladies say on their podcast, you really do have to check with your state to see what is required. We cannot stress that enough, and whether or not you're choosing to get the CCC. I have some resources, and I'm going to also link this podcast on that page too. But we have at fixslp.com a student and new graduate section, where, last May, I did a podcast that I kind of gave what our current opinion and stance was, and I think we're still standing by that is that probably new grads should go ahead and get the CCC, because it's easier to reinstate it than it is to get it for the first time, and so we do still operate on that. But obviously, as things change in our field, if people don't want to get the CCC the first time, and as long as they understand the choice that they're making, we totally support that, because that's what we need to see. We just know that that can't be the case everywhere in the current climate and environment we're in with job postings, and we haven't eliminated it completely for Medicaid, but we're getting there, so hopefully in a couple years, we can change our recommendation. So anyway, I wanted to lay all of that out so you knew what we were referring to as we talked and maybe this is the first time you've ever heard that. I just pointed it out to Nikki and Hylan. I was like, Hey, I don't really care what you do, but you kind of said the word CF a lot in your one podcast, and here's why we change that. And they hadn't even thought of it. They're like, Oh, we never thought because it is so ingrained in us. So start thinking about that as as all of you talk to your colleagues and employers, and maybe start using state specific language instead of ASHA language, because in order to change a culture and or and in order to really promote full autonomy, we have to get ASHA out of that initial conversation, or they're always going to control the narrative. So with that, what do you guys want to jump into first burnout?
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14:23Jeanette Benigas
Jump
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14:23Hylan Noble
Jump into burnout? I'm all about that. Yeah. So I think for us, that's a big part of of what we do. And you know why we're doing what we're doing to provide that community, because the burnout rates are insane. There is so much data that's coming out, and articles recently, especially post COVID, showing that there is a substantial increase in burnout. We probably all know an SLP or more that has left the field. Actually, I know I do, and they were wonderful SLPs, but it was burnout. It was pay. There were so many things, but a big piece of it was burnout and also not having enough support and mentorship. And a recent article that I read was saying that one of, I think it was like 60 or 70% of SLPs are experiencing extreme burnout, and are, you know, are questioning their career to some degree, which is crazy, statistics, if you think about it, because we all join this field because we love it. We have this passion for it. There's something innate in us that that, you know, we have these gifts that bring us to this field. And you know, one of the contributing factors to helping keep SLPs in the field and happy was mentorship. It's, it's a crisis that, you know, Nickki, you can, can talk about this too. We actually presented at CASHA about this, and talked about, you know, the fact that that it is really a problem. And new SLPs, especially in new grads, we want to help curb that and figure out, what are some things that we can do to support keeping people in our field.
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15:57Nikki Rosner
It's, it's really problematic when you look at over 70% of SLPs have a wait list, and so all of these kids and adults who need services are not accessing services, not because they don't want them, because they can't get them. So now you have all of these kiddos or people looking for services. They're waiting. Time keeps going. Time keeps going. And all of these SLPs are leaving the field, and you have new grads coming out who are excited and want to learn, and you have SLPs who have been in the field burning out. So it just is creating an entire almost catastrophe for these little kiddos and these families who just need services to help, and that's where we really believe it's such a problem in our field that we need to start talking about it and addressing it too. So that's why we created the mentorship collective, because it was the little piece that we loved doing, that we would be able to help out with burnout is something that we have to find a way to be able to squelch it just a little bit right now and then figure out long term solutions for as well, because it is the case loads are so high within the school districts. Case loads are extremely high in private practice. And so a lot of times, highlight, and I have talked to new grads about the salaries that you see that are extremely high often come with extremely high expectations for hours, and you just don't know that. As a new grad, you come out and you see a number, and that number is much better than this number. The package is better here, but the number is better here, and that's where we tend to go, because we're looking at our finances, and we're looking at, if I multiply this amount per hour times 40, which is how much I'm going to be working, that's how much I'm going to make. And that is just not the actual reality of being a per diem SLP, or in California, where it doesn't exist, an hourly SLP. It is extremely problematic, but it's sold as this beautiful gold package of look how much money you could make, and then you are kind of slapped in the face because you don't have mentorship. You are extremely exhausted at the end of the day. You don't know how to handle all of these new families who are coming in, who expect something out of you because they want to help their child, or they want to help their family member, and so it becomes the cyclical spiral that just causes so much chaos, and you can see it in different types of settings. So burnout is, I would say, probably one of our biggest, yeah, problems.
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18:38Jeanette Benigas
I'm going to do a little plug here, because we we spent everybody who's listening. We spent a lot of time talking prior because we don't know each other. So I wanted to get to know the guests and let them get to know me a little bit. But they both missed our recent episode with Meredith Harold. You're not making $60 an hour or something like that. It was a couple weeks ago which Meredith Harold is the owner of Informed SLP, which is a professional development company, but also newly the Informed Jobs. And so you hit the nail on the head, Nikki. So if you're listening and you want more information about that, she even gives a formula like for new companies who can't tell you statistics or hours on how they figure it out, and they have the informed, the informed pay rate, or something like that. They run every single post through statistics, and they ask a bunch of questions that really gets to the like nitty gritty of what you'll actually be paid. And they ask a lot of hard questions that these companies have to answer in order to be posted on informed jobs, or they get blocked. Go, everybody, go check out that episode. Maybe I'll even link it up and go check out Informed Jobs. If you're a new grad or a student who's looking towards trying to find a good job, they're blocking anyone who's below the 10% pay rate just because they had to cap it somewhere, and but they know not everybody is taking a job simply just for the pay, and that sometimes there's other things that are important to people. So you are going to see a wide range of pay. But what Nikki just said is this beautiful package, and it's a higher number. Informed Jobs if, if these companies are even posted on there, I'm betting you some of them are blocked. Informed Jobs is going to get down to the reason why it is that much, and you're going to be seeing those kinds of hours and details that you may need to know that new grads don't even think about looking at and there's a ton of education in their library. They are working so hard to put out good education. I responded to somebody on social media a few days ago, and they and I said, we'll write a blog on that. I'll get it out. And they jumped in and said, "You don't have to. We have this in our like education library." So anyway, Informed Jobs, little plug for them. Little plug for that episode, Nikki you Hylan, you guys should check that out, because I think it's super applicable. If you're talking to people, new grads, you can always be pointing them to that information, and I think it is very complimentary to what you're doing. So anyway, had to plug that because it's a good resource for new grads all SLPs, really, but as people are thinking about these questions and needing to figure out how to interpret it, they're they're there for part of this reason.
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21:31Hylan Noble
That's a great resource, because we, you know, just like Nikki said, a lot of new grads that we speak to are really focused on that number, and we try really hard to counsel them in those moments of what that means and that that high number does not equal quality of life. It doesn't equal sustainable, high quality mentorship that you were going to desperately need. You just don't know you need it yet. So that's something also that we're finding in this space of helping out new grads, is they don't know what they don't know, and that's where we're trying to all be informative to help them so they know what kinds of questions to ask. They know the red flags to look for with some of these job postings, especially across different settings. And that's such a really cool resource to be able to share with them.
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22:17Jeanette Benigas
This isn't a unique problem to SLP, I want to say that too. I pay attention on Reddit. I've recently joined Tiktok because there's a lot of students and new grads in that space who don't know about Fix SLP and need to and I'm seeing a lot of concerns like, "did I pick the wrong field?" "Did I- I'm regretting this." "Is it really this bad?" And what I want to say is the grass is always greener on the other side. And what I think is very positive is to our students and new grads, the reason you're seeing this negativity, it's not so much negativity. It's people like me. It's people like Nikki and Hylan. It's people like Meredith who have the Informed Jobs. We are standing up and speaking out to change the problems that exist, and that is why you're seeing so much of this. Because we are in the middle of an awakening. We are in our fixer era, okay, us old people, and there's not a wrinkle to be seen on any three of these screens, by the way, but us old people are tired of every September, everybody gets online and complains about having to pay their CCC and ASHA not doing anything like that has gone on for years, and enough things have happened In our field over the last couple of years, I'd say since 2020, where we're we're all like, Okay, enough. We can all sit around and complain about our jobs, or we can do something about it. And I think this is a beautiful time to become an SLP, because, like Nikki and Hylan said, we did this because we love it. I love being an SLP, listen, putting a camera in someone's nose and looking at their boogers brings me no greater joy. Okay, so I love what I do do. I love what's involved with this, no, but I'm also not going to sit around and complain. I'm going to do my part to make it better for everyone who's coming in now. So I want people to know that like my husband is in sales. He manages a billboard company. Okay, do you think there's not problems in his company there? Sure is. Okay. It's just a different field and some different problems. So there's problems no matter where you go. It's how you choose to advocate for yourself and your colleagues and how you choose to get through it that's going to make the difference. So please don't think that that's unique to speech, and it is because you're seeing so much of this online, because things like this platform exist, that we're calling out the crap and we're changing it, and we aren't actually changing it. And so Nikki and Hylan, they're changing this mentorship situation, which is a systemic problem. So what do you guys think about complaints? We didn't plan to talk about this, but I told you, like it kind of just goes where it goes. I'm sure you're seeing this stuff online too. So what kind of stuff are you seeing? What do we have to say about it? How are we addressing it? What do you guys think about what I said?
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25:17Hylan Noble
Yeah, I see a lot of imposter syndrome. Burnout. Is this field, right for me, work, life, balance, a lot of those comments, and I cannot second you enough Jeanette by saying that it's going to happen. You know, no matter where you go and what type of job you do and to to us, it's important to invest in yourself. That's kind of how we look at it. Is you've invested in yourself to go to graduate school, you've got to continue to invest in yourself, because no one else is going to you're going to get a lot of these shiny packages and these companies that hire you, and at the end of the day, they are taking care of themselves and and even more now than ever before, there's not the leadership that there used to be there, if there's just not and we're that's what we're trying to help shift is support each other and invest in yourself. You can't depend on someone else. Invest in solid mentorship, invest in good trainings, and invest in learning how to advocate for yourself and finding these jobs that are going to be the best fit for you. And that's the beauty of our field, right? Is the fact that we have so much flexibility. If you want to work with adults, you can work with adults. If you want to work with kids, you can work with kids and across different settings.
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26:30Hylan Noble
settings.
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26:31Nikki Rosner
I think something else we're finding too is there's so much friction of speaking your mind, and there's something of speaking your mind in a kind way, and speaking your mind where it comes across as a little bit too abrupt, and when you're speaking with different people, like employers and your supervisors, we found that would be presented at casha, there was a significant divide between older therapists and new therapists, and the ability to communicate is just not there, and so the language each one was using about the other. And we're like, right here, we're labeling, we're just labeling people of like, they don't want to work. And you're like, that's not true. They do want to work. Or it was just very fascinating to us, because we know that with families, as soon as you label them as that's a difficult Mom, you've now made it where this mom is just other, and you're not thinking about them in an empathetic way. And we know that that's a really big problem. So there's a few different problems within that, but that's a huge piece we're seeing. Is being able to have hard conversations without shying away, but doing them in a thoughtful kind way can change your entire career. Yeah, and social media can, like, really exacerbate what you're supposed to do if you follow some of these accounts.
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27:47Jeanette Benigas
Yes, we've been looking at ways to very creatively pay our team, and so we we're not really doing that yet, but I have made it my job, because this literally is my free job, to really pay attention to our analytics and statistics, and it is wild to what you just said, Nikki, about the divide in older, more seasoned clinicians, and I don't want to call them old, just more seasoned, to the newer, more green clinicians and the generational gap that is there when You look at our statistics, they very much like mirror. We get the same type of engagement across all platforms. But then when you look at the ages and look at who's engaging where it is, very distinct, and they engage on different posts. So I can promise you that if something goes "SLP viral", on Instagram, on Facebook, it is not getting love. People are not happy, and vice versa. And it is wild to watch that. And it's also interesting, because I am a very special generation. I am a Xennial, okay? I am not Gen X, and I am not a Millennial. I'm not I'm born in that little gap, like my graduation from undergrad. I was the last graduating class before Facebook was invented, so I went through my whole undergrad, and I'm really aging myself, but I'm not afraid to get older. My life just keeps getting better, okay? But people the zennials in my age bracket, we grew up in an analog life, but have also come of age in like a digital world. So we see both. And so I was trained in this old school, SLP, way like so I get it. I get we talked about this earlier, not on the podcast, but I get "I worked hard for my CCC". I understand that. I did too. I just changed my line of thinking, and I was open to that. But there seems to be an age where stuff like that and that type of change becomes very difficult. And then we've got our new grads, people in their new graduate experience, where, you know, they're learning new things, and it's different, yeah, and it, it can get very combative at times, like people will go hard, because this younger generation is not afraid to speak up and good for them, because this is that you guys are the people we need. Fix SLP, is planting the seeds for what you're going to harvest in like 10 or 15 years. And so we need you. Anyway, I'm speaking a lot.
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30:29Nikki Rosner
We love, loved that we talked about this in our presentation. We're like, this is good, talking about the work life balance and not wanting to work overtime and work 60 hour jobs. For a job that's paying you for 40 hours is good. That's not a bad thing. That does not mean that our newer generation doesn't want to work. It means that they recognize what a 40 hour work week is. Wow, what a concept like. Wow. Why didn't we think of that? And I think that is, it's good. These changes are good, these pushes are good, and we have to learn how to communicate to be able to continue, because there's so much knowledge with our seasoned therapists. So we have to be able to work together and not create this gigantic divide that you are seasoned and they they are young. It's not about that. It's really about finding that little bridge. Again, I talk about this all the time, that there's this sense of having a rite of passage, that it's going to be difficult and tricky your first few years as an SLP, why? Why does there need to be a rite of passage? There's this sense of with seasoned SLPs, and we also get it right. We see that perspective. Because, to your point, Jeanette, we kind of were in that mindset as well, as well. You got to work really, really, really, really hard and do all of these extra things to be successful. And you know this newer, the newer SLPs are helping us realize so many, so many things, and that's also what we're trying to help push is, you know, why would we Why would we reinvent the wheel? Why would we not work more efficiently? Why if we can access tools that make our life easier, like telehealth, for example, that was a point of discussion at casha as well. Why would we not give that opportunity to families and clinicians? Why would we not embrace some of the new age technology, you know, to use it to help us move forward and the work life balance, and we like to call it a work life harmony and figuring out the tools to advocate for that, versus this mindset of, well, you know, they're, they're just young, and this is the rite of passage. This is just part of, part of getting that first job and being in the real world. Why? Why can't we change that so that we're keeping people excited about our field and wanting to stay in it so that they're they're not burnout, and they're not upset, but they're loving what they do. The question I was going to ask right before you started talking ties so nicely in with this, and I don't know the answer, you guys are probably tracking these trends more than me. But are you seeing that they're you know, with more seasoned SLPs, there's more of this authoritative almost. And this is, again, I don't want anyone to be put off here. I am not lumping everyone into the same group, but there is this trend of almost like a power trip, where I am going to make your life miserable. This isn't going to be fun. The folks a little bit older than me are the same age as me. I'm going to make your life a living hell, but maybe like mentors who are 10 or 15 years younger than me. But is that changing? Is the way SLPs are supervising? Are we seeing a shift there? Or is this still rampant across at every mentor, or many mentors. It's kind of a mixture. I wouldn't say it's like one way or another way, but the mixture is, we see is a lot of hands off of just like you'll figure it out you're doing great, and no actual feedback happening. So there's sometimes with seasoned SLPs, they're giving a ton of feedback. So our new our new grads, are a little overwhelmed and overloaded, or they're just trying to, like, make sure that they're implementing it that way. Their supervisor is giving them information. This is how I should implement it, versus kind of challenging of the thinking. And then what we see, too, with some of the younger supervisors is they don't have time, and so it's not that they don't want to, they don't have the bandwidth or the mental capacity, and so they are kind of hands off of just like, you're going to figure it out. This is what everyone does for your first year. This is how you do supervision. You just like, I'm here to ask you questions, how are you doing? And we know that when you ask, how are you doing, it's just so open ended, and no one really likes to admit that they're struggling at times, and that's really, really hard because those questions, and we're working currently on creating a program for mentors as well, because that's something that we just love so much. And we realized Hylan and I have mentored a lot together, so we are really symbiotic. And then we had we mentored some other mentors. That was their first time mentoring. We're like, oh my gosh, this is very different, and we can create some of those helpful strategies to support clinicians, because learning just how to take feedback in every single way, because you don't know how a family member is going to give you feedback. Sometimes they send you an email that you're like, Whoa. Where'd that email come from? Sometimes they say it straight to your face, like, I didn't like that session. Why are you doing that with my child? And sometimes they say it in a way that's a little bit backhanded, of like Hylans just like, really good at doing therapy with Sammy, and I'm maybe you should talk to Hylan and then we find some of our new grads are spiraling from it. So it's really interesting. The I feel like I went off topic, but it really is the interesting of knowing that different generations are having different conversations with our new grads, and that creates a dynamic that can just be, I don't, I don't think there is a specific like authoritative or non authoritative. It's really just a big mixture based on time and personality.
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36:12Speaker 1
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36:12Hylan Noble
I was going to say time is a huge factor that we hear is, I think there are a lot of of also SLPs that want to learn how to be a strong supervisor, but they've never been given the tools to learn how to do that, and they don't have access to trainings and support, other than a few trainings that they maybe can access online, that are, you know, we won't even go there. We won't even go there. I think everybody knows it's not good, right? It is not good. And so how do we train therapists to be strong supervisors when we have never been taught how to do that? And that's something we are also trying to do in our space. What we're going to do in our space is provide that support, because even if you don't have the time, there's still strategies that you can provide clinicians, and that's where, you know, we can come in as well to help supplement that, to provide clinicians, because that's part of the problem, is the lack of time we hear that. We heard that a lot at casha, we had a lot of supervisors who actually came to our talk and they said, We love this. We want more tools to learn how to be better supervisors. We also want to advocate to our school districts and to our, you know, directors in clinics and our hospitals to have more support to learn how to be better supervisors, and also have more time to supervise new grads and just SLPs in general, to help them grow, to help them find their their niche, to help them find their passion, so they can keep growing. Because that's what we also know in our field, right is that everyone wants to find a way to grow, and there's not a lot of growth trajectories in our field and there, but there are ways that you can still grow as an SLP, and feel like you're growing in the field if you have strong mentorship and you have someone who sees you and who can help support you on that path. So it's it's such a variety, and I think it probably varies too in regions and locations and settings, what you're able to receive. We obviously know the private practice world very well, but we hear a lot of complaints too, from a variety of settings, school districts, medical settings, all of it.
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38:17Jeanette Benigas
I think we can only do what we know.
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38:20Hylan Noble
Yeah
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38:21Jeanette Benigas
When, as a former professor, who did had have to supervise across the age span in clinics, knock on wood. I'm never going back to that, but I am a kick ass mentor. When my friends or my former students message me about a swallowing issue, buckle up, because I got you on the phone for the next hour, okay, and maybe even three hours, if you don't shut me up. But if you ask me how to handle a three year old with some kind of phonological process, forget it. And it was very difficult for me, as a mentor, supervisor in the academic role to supervise a student doing that kind of work. Because, you know, it's the bait and switch in academia too, right? You're told you're gonna do our adult clinic, and then you're handed an entire caseload of three year olds, and you're like, what the f just happened? This is not what I told was told when I took this job. So it's the same kind of thing. Remember, your professors are also being lied to, just like you are when you, you know, apply for jobs. And so I probably, I know I wasn't always the best mentor, and not because I wasn't watching my students give therapy, or because I, you know, I was wanted to not do a great job. It's just because I didn't know. And a lot of times it would just be all right, they're figuring it out. They're making progress. Like my student has gone from point A to point B. The kiddo is making progress. They've got a good evidence based thing in front of them, and all of this looks good. And in the meantime, I'm sure some of my students were spiraling like she's not helping me, but it wasn't because I didn't want to it was just because sometimes I didn't know the things to point out. So anyway, you know, I think it's this kind of thing is needed for for people who are supervised, we're all human, and we only can do what we know. And so for students and new grads to understand that too is it's not always because your mentor is a awful person. It's just, you know, they and they might have been sold a lie in terms of supervision.
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40:35Hylan Noble
yeah
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40:37Jeanette Benigas
You know?
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40:37Hylan Noble
Well, and I was gonna say even being in the supervision space myself in a graduate program and helping support it. I think that's a positive direction that we need to go in in terms of helping those clinic directors understand the need for teaching more critical thinking skills and practical strategies. And that's something that I've had some really good conversations with other clinical supervisors about and we've been able to see in the program that I'm supervising in, and they're making some really interesting changes in their graduate program in terms of the flexibility with how students are being supervised, because it's it's necessary. You know, even the clinical supervisors are realizing and are pushing, hey, these students are coming out of graduate school, and we're getting a lot of callbacks. We're getting a lot of students that are really stressed out or have a lot of questions clinically. And a lot of it is teaching those critical thinking skills that not everything. Probably most of what we do is not black and white. There is so much gray, which I'm sure we will get into. But you know, a lot of things are taught in that textbook way, that everything fits in this perfect little box, if you get this diagnosis, and if that were the case, then none of us would have jobs. This wouldn't even be a field, right? We would have a we could open up that box, and that would tell us exactly what to do, and we would be able to discharge patients. And so that's something too, that we've seen with a lot of new grads and students are those critical thinking skills and having trouble with that and wanting those specific answers, and then the supervisors having trouble teaching those critical thinking skills.
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42:14Jeanette Benigas
I have a question, and we're getting towards needing to wrap up, and I think I am about to unleash an entire episode, and people are gonna have a lot of opinions, but do you think with the entrance of AI, that critical thinking is gonna get worse, not better, and how's that going to affect our students, new grads and future therapists?
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42:44Nikki Rosner
Yeah. Yes. And no, I think yes. And the peer, it takes away... I mean, even with us, like sometimes with marketing ideas, I'm like, I just use it as, like a helpful tool. I'm like, Oh, this is exactly what I wanted, and I can help myself get to that point. So part of it is it's kind of cool, because it can help. It's like a sounding board at times, as long as you know what the right information is, and that, to me, is a scary piece of AI if you don't know what the correct information is, you have to know how to look at therapy and the person who's receiving the therapy, the child, the adult, and see and hear and understand what they need. To use AI in a thoughtful way, if you're using it to create your entire lesson plan based on this lovely synopsis that you got from the testing or the parent and a standardized test that's going to cause just frustration across everyone. It almost creates, I think it will create a problem of, it's not even laziness, of lack of ability to shift and pivot, and that's so important in our field, just being able to look at what's not working, throw it out, and figure out a way to make it work.
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43:58Hylan Noble
Well, I completely agree. And I was also going to say that I think that that that critical thinking piece of pivoting in the moment exactly because, especially in pediatrics, you're constantly pivoting. And in fact, I don't even like to teach lesson plans. Nikki, I know doesn't either. That's, that's how we've supported a lot of new grads, is throw that out the window. But grad school does teach that initially, but eventually we need to get away from that. I think, because that's doing that's doing us a disservice. I will say, though, that I think some graduate programs are recognizing the power of AI and are trying to in their syllabi, and when they're discussing with clinicians, you know, the limits and the boundaries of being able to use it, and they are starting to really set up those standards of, okay, this is where you can use it, let's say for report editing or generating, maybe some ideas of activities with a client, versus truly critical thinking and clinical thinking. But that doesn't mean that there's an invisible boundary there, right? That doesn't there's not an electric fence that's going to shock you if you go past it and you actually access it for those critical thinking skills. So I think that there are ways that it could help the work life balance, in terms of some of the paperwork, some of the things like that, that we could use it with within reason, creating some ideas for therapy. But I think the true therapy, the true critical thinking. It's a real slippery slope to dive into it.
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45:25Jeanette Benigas
I agree with you, and I hope students and new grads hear that one more time to age myself. Do you remember when you did a language analysis and you had to do it all on paper, and know all of the parts of speech and like, code it all, and do that whole thing, and you understood how to do a language analysis by hand and understand all of the things about language that was going on with that child. And then salt arrived on the scene, and students had a very hard time understanding why they had to learn to do it by hand first before they were allowed to use salt. I don't even know what they do now, because I'm not in the pediatric space, and I really do hope professors are still making their students learn it by hand first. I'm betting No, yeah, yeah, but that was a very controversial time where, you know, you did hear like I wasn't teaching those classes, but I would hear my students complaining about it, and I would totally go to bat for my colleague, who we want to make sure that you understand what the components of language are before you just have a computer. Tell you right, so you know how to treat it. And so I'm, I am a lover of AI. We, I, you know, it's my thing. But again, it's also not always right. Like I, I wrote the most beautiful nine page aphasia report about a year ago with AI that it was, I have never seen anything so spectacular. But I also used it, not too long ago, to write a report for cognition. I used the CL, Qt, and I told it what to do, and then I read it, and I was like, this isn't even right.
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47:16Jeanette Benigas
So if you don't have the knowledge to understand that what it writes for you isn't right, you're in big trouble.
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47:22Jeanette Benigas
It happened to me for a report
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47:25Hylan Noble
It happened to me for a report that I was working on, and I went in and edited. It was like, Oh, this is amazing. Yes, this is going to help me so much. And I had to edit so much of it, the language that it was using, the accuracy of the information. It is absolutely wild, and it was a beautiful report, but the accuracy was not there at all.
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47:48Jeanette Benigas
I'll tell you what it is good for. Me, Elizabeth, where we do all of our content for Fix SLP, I can promise you, if you see a typo in some of our tiles. It's because we didn't run it through AI that week that once we caught on that when we're done designing our stuff, if we just put it in AI and say, spell check this, it gets us every time we're perfect. But there are times where we're like, finishing it two seconds before it needs to be posted, and we don't run it through, and then we can fix that stuff on Facebook, where you can swap out tiles, but not on Instagram, those mistakes live on. Got the info, but we're not going to see a mistake till eight weeks later, or until someone plays it out to us, that is where it is very helpful. Is look at the look at this carousel, and tell me if there are typos.
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48:42Jeanette Benigas
it
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48:42Hylan Noble
It is. It's so helpful there. And one more thing I thought of, where I think it could be a little scary, is informal assessment. So to your point about the language samples and sought, I think that that's a big thing that Nikki and I like to teach is the ability and the power of informal assessment. Because our standardized tests, we know are, most of them are not very well normed for our clients, they're just not, and they give us a very minimal picture of our client skills. And a lot of our students are wanting that black and white, that information, and they're plugging that into AI and I caution students and new grads not to do that, because you have to know how to informally assess a child that's going to give you the most accurate information, and that's where I could also see AI being an issue, just like you mentioned the language samples, and thinking about that information that really even stresses me out, thinking about it, because I never thought about it until you just brought that up, but that's the informal assessment is really tricky, but it's so necessary for quality care and for the accuracy and, you know, making a plan of care that's going to help support the child.
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49:49Nikki Rosner
I just think, too, if you think, if you're putting everything in AI to spit out a report or something like that, knowing how to talk about it with the family is probably going to be a little bit difficult for you because you don't really realize why you wrote that, or like having that conversation with the family who asks you a question about it. I want to know if I'm the parent coming in that you understand exactly why you wrote that for my child, that individuality so it's, it's a real slippery slope of you have to really, really know what you're talking about. And I think that's a big thing with new grads, is you often don't know what you're talking about. We know you don't know, and that's okay. We expect it. But if you're using a tool on top of that, how long is it going to take you to really understand why you're doing these things? Because having those conversations with families is how you start to learn that. Like, Oh, wait a second, I do kind of know a little bit, and then I know a little bit more, and I kind of understand. And as you're doing that, you're starting to figure it out through these reports, through all of this conversations, through doing phonetic transcription longhand, and not putting things through with just like recording something and putting it through. It's so it's really problematic long term. Where does that go with our career, and we're new with AI, what does that do long term with all of our graduate students and like long term, I don't know. I'm a little scared. It's got a lot of benefits, but I think there's a lot of danger involved too.
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51:17Jeanette Benigas
Have you seen the video on social media that says your future doctor is using AI to get through med school, so start dieting and exercising now. And here's what I think coming. Circling back to this is a great way to wrap up. Circling back to the top of the episode where I said I miss a like generation that was analog and then digital and all the things there used to be this huge fear that computers are going to replace our jobs, and now we're seeing it when you walk into McDonald's and you order on a screen instead of with a person, that company is saving money by putting a computer there and not having 10 people behind the counter to serve you. Or all of these grocery stores where it's self checkout, right? Or what about if I this is very regional, and I have traveled to Seattle quite a bit to film med bridge courses, but they have these Amazon stores there where you walk in and you walk out, you put everything in your bag, and you walk out, and you're done, and it charges your Amazon account for what you're buying. There's no people in that store. Good luck asking a question. You're lucky if you see two people in those stores, right? And so I know that these are, like, lower level, like not a ton of training, training, jobs that have been eliminated. But what are we doing to ourselves as these big corporations and companies, especially as reimbursement gets lower and lower and lower, if they can replace us with a computer, you sure as hell better believe they're going to do it. And so if 20 years ago, we were worried about computers replacing us, and now we're actually seeing it happen. What's coming in another 20 or 30 years with our health care? Yeah, well, man, we did not plan on going off on that change. I knew I was opening up like Pandora's box. There's so much more to say, but we're hitting an hour, and we want to make sure that we keep this under an hour. But I said this in the podcast with Elise Mitchell from the therapist support network, that what she did was identify a pain point or a problem in the field, and is doing her piece and doing her part to do something about it, and that is exactly what you guys are doing. You see this pain point we are not being adequately supported in our nine month supervision period. How do we fix that? And that is a big reason why we asked you to come on fix SLP, is because you are fixing the problem, I think, in a very good way, with a lot of integrity and a lot of passion, and I totally respect that. You know, you haven't been around for years and years and years, but I think you're probably here to stay, and I'm so excited to watch you, like continue to grow and like come out with these new products for supervision. So thank you for sharing this with us, and normally, you guys just give an affiliate code for affiliates to make money. But I always tell people when they're coming on the pod, if they want to do this, they sort of need to think about giving our fixers a discount too. So I'm going to share the affiliate code with you guys listening if you want to buy their course. So we still have to figure out the logistics of how I can share that with you. So we don't quite have a code or a link yet, we are going to continue to work through this, and so by the time this drops, we'll have it. So stay tuned to the end, or maybe I'll cut it in right here, jumping in real quick to say that code is FixSLP. F-I-X-S-L-P, and of course, we will have it linked up online. We're getting ready to post all of our affiliate codes soon, if they're not there already. So you guys, thank you for being bold and brave enough to, like step into the field and try to start fixing the pain points and taking care of our students coming out as new grads and just loving on them and helping them through because we all know how hard this is. We need more. We need more Nikki's and Hylans and I am not that person. I am the person to scream at people for them, but we need people like you who are a little softer and nicer to be walking our new grads through life. So that's awesome. If you go to fix slp.com in our menu, we do have a section that says, for students and new grads, please click it. I've got a podcast from a year ago where I give some recommendations and try to educate you on some things. I probably do use the terminology CF because we hadn't quite worked all of the kinks of what we stand for yet at that point in time. But I have a little blog there and just some information that might be helpful. Or if you're someone who supervises, or you're thinking about taking a student, or you talk to students or new grads who have these kinds of questions that you familiarize yourself with, what's there might be a great place to go look so you can send people there as well. So thanks for coming on. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for fixing it!
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56:33Jeanette Benigas
You.
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