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How Mentorship Is Failing SLPs — And What We Can Do About It | Otter.ai

How Mentorship Is Failing SLPs — And What We Can Do About It

Jeanette Benigas1h 2min

Jeanette Benigas

00:00

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, you

Jeanette Benigas

00:45

Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Jeanette, no Preston again today. It is into summer. We've got crazy schedules. I am literally, like less than 24 hours before it needs to post. So we're gonna pray nothing goes wrong. But I have, we've had quite a few issues already. I have Lynsie Erickson with me. She is @thespeechpack on socials, and then she also has the medical SLP mentorship program. So we're still talking about mentorship today. She and I have been on talking to each other probably for two hours at this point, so we just, we need to get moving. We're skipping reviews. Just hit subscribe five star rating and review. We're just going to skip all that. Get right into it before we move forward, though, I just want to make sure I clarify. There are a lot of mentorship programs out there. There are a lot of collectives out there, especially for medical SLPs. So I just want to make sure this is the medical SLP mentorship is for her business. So don't get that confused with other mentorship programs out there. You can research online to see who has the different ones. But thanks for coming on, Lynsie.

Lynsie Erickson

02:06

I'm so excited.

Jeanette Benigas

02:09

Lynsie is li ke an original fixer.

Lynsie Erickson

02:13

Jeanette Benigas

02:14

Yeah! We asked Lynsie to come on to continue the mentorship conversation, because she's in the medical space. If you missed last week's episode, the ladies Nikki and Hylan from The Mentorship Collective, were on. They're more school pediatric, however, that that was not just for pediatric. SLPs, we got into like so many. We went on like we ended with AI, okay, it had nothing to do with mentorship. But this podcast, we don't write a script. We know why we're asking people on but we like it to be super organic, so it just goes where it goes. So in the same spirit, if you're a pediatric SLP, stay tuned, because this is all going to apply to you too. Because another passion of Lynsie is and what she's thinking of moving towards is mentoring, the mentor. So we have a lot to talk about today. Why don't you tell us about yourself?

Lynsie Erickson

03:07

So I have been a speech therapist for about six years. I have been mostly in skilled nursing. That's where my main job has been. But I have been a per diem therapist in acute setting, in acute rehab. I've kind of dabbled in a bunch of different settings. I got started in the field. In general, my grandma had a stroke. I knew that I wanted to work in medical thought I would maybe go like radiology physical therapy. Wasn't just quite sure. Had a background in some communication, found the field really fell in love with it. And then during my grad program, really, actually, during my undergrad program, they had an aphasia program on campus, and I volunteered during my undergrad and fell in love with the Aphasia program, just the people there helping them communicate. Being able to sit down with someone and communicate with someone who had such limited language, it just sparked something in me. I love kids. Love kids. Don't get me wrong. They are great. But something about giving back to someone that has lost something, that has lost that communication, and being able to help them get that back, just like, ignited this fire in me, and I loved it, so decided I wanted to go with adults. I mean, everybody in my grad program knew, like, we'd be in class talking about stuff, and they wouldn't, like the teachers wouldn't even call on me, because they knew that I didn't care. Like they were like, yep, Lynsie, we know you don't, but they just they knew. So it was hard, and I think that also partly is what made me have that fire as well for wanting to become a supervisor, was seeing that lack of mentorship for the medical side of things, because lack of placement is. In general, right? It's hard, it's hard to have all of that when our field is still sort of lacking in that medical sense, so sort of pediatric base. And so I saw that there was this need, and knowing that people needed something to fill that gap, there's just this divide between there's a little bit of extra. I mean, I shouldn't have actually really say there's extra, because listening to the podcast from last week, there clearly is this really big need in the pediatric field as well, right? They talked about how there isn't mentorship for them, and that's lacking in the pediatric field as well. I think mentorship in general, is lacking, which I think is what we've kind of come to find out.

Jeanette Benigas

05:44

Yeah, and it's so it's not just a problem in one space. This is a gap in the field where we need to fill it, and we're clearly not going to be able to fix this systemic problem overnight. We've had a little bit of pushback since last week. Well, this is just preying on people who already have not enough money and well, no, I can't agree with that. I think if there's people with a passion for mentorship who want to help, and you're stepping away from your full time income, or you're staying up late at night to make these resources because you care and you really want to help. There's a price tag that goes on that because we encourage getting paid our value, and that's not just in the clinic. That's for everything we do, and it stinks that if people want good mentorship, they have to pay for it. But it's the in my mind, unless someone has a better solution, please reach out, because we'll put it all out there. But in my mind, the only way to get that is to pay for it, and that's an access problem. Not everybody can access that, and that's not fair. We fully recognize that, but for right now, it's the only solution, because we have this systemic problem of how our mentorship is set up, lack of training, lack of resources, lack of time, all of these things. We have this group of people who need help. You and I are agreeing it's not just the new grads who need help. The mentors need help too, and if we're not getting that from the systems we're already in, how can we access the help? And unfortunately, sometimes it's to pay someone, but also it's like paying if I want to get in shape, it's like hiring a personal trainer. Yeah, just because this is in our workspace doesn't mean we should do it for free, because everybody's time is valuable. So I want to put that out there too. We have lots to talk about, but yeah, there's a problem, and this is an answer to a systemic issue that we'll get into a little bit, I think. But I also want to clarify that you said you've only been an SLP, for six years, so why do you have any business mentoring, right? But you are also a little bit older, so you you're not the same age as many and we're not going to give your age away, but you have a lot of life experience under your belt, and I think that goes a long way too with what you've brought into this career from what you were doing before. So I don't discount what you have to say. I think what you're doing is great, because your experience, like, you know, life experiences too, and you have that.

Lynsie Erickson

08:26

Yeah. I mean, I also, I just, I'm currently taking my 13th grad intern, Whoa, yeah. I'm currently taking also my second nine month mentee, or CF, as other people would say. So I think in that regard, I've I've mentored a lot of other people too, who have just wanted to call and talk about, hey, I have this patient, or hey, I'm starting a new job, or hey, I'm doing whatever, you know, and people who've just done a lot of zoom calls with me and asking for advice, because either they are, you know, just out of grad school and wanting to go into medical placement. And hey, I only did the new cases, and I don't really feel prepared, right? Like, again, we're talking about this systemic issue where these grad students are coming out of grad school with such limited knowledge, wanting to go into the medical field, but not feeling prepared. And how do we bridge that gap for them? And you're right, it's unfair that we're then saying, Well, hey, I can provide you with this knowledge. I have this expertise. You have to pay me, but I'll give it to you. But at the same time, how is it any different than us saying, Oh, well, you also have to go do all these CEUs to continue in the field in general. It's no different, right? Like we need to continue to stay in tip top shape, to keep our knowledge up. So if we're going to do that as as a professional in general, we all need that, right? We all need that extra training. And so that's, I think that's what we end up having available, is this extra training that's available from someone who's kind of been there and done it already.

Speaker 1

10:11

already.

Jeanette Benigas

10:12

I think Hylan and Nikki put it best in a video preview I put out yesterday where they said, You have to keep investing in yourself, right? Yeah, that we always have room to grow. But I want to, like, backtrack a little bit, because, again, we don't have a script, and we just go where this goes. I want to touch on Cindy case just for a second, and how that is really impacting our new grads, and it will circle into what we talk about next week, because you guys, next week is a banger of an episode. Episode 82 is going to really just blow things up. But in 2020, ASHA changed the CAA for accreditation standards, and then the CFCC to purchase the CCC changed the standards from an equal number of adult and pediatric treatment and assessment hours to a breath and depth, which stemmed out of a 2016 survey. We get into all of this next week, but what that did is it allowed universities who have trouble finding placements for students. And I would venture, I'm not going to venture today because I was an externship coordinator. I know how this works. Medical placements are harder to find because of the systemic issues we're experiencing. There. People don't have the time, they don't have the capacity. More people are saying no, and so universities are filling the gaps with simu case hours, and actually they don't even have to do that, because there is no rule for accreditation or the purchase of the CCC that says you have to have any adult hours at all. So universities, and not all of them, and kudos to the ones who are really doing the right thing, but I've seen it. There are a ton of universities leaning into simu case or not giving hours at all. And I was a professor in 2020 when we had to use simu case. Simi case does a good thing. They do good things. Hopefully they're they're changing, but I'm sorry when the only assessment available in simu case for adults is the CLQT, we've got big issues. Yeah. Are you seeing a lot of that? Yeah, how much experience are students actually getting in the med arena? Because I know what I see, and maybe it's bias, but...

Lynsie Erickson

12:37

No, but I really don't think they are. And I think, again, that's part of the problem. And I think there's a lot of these things that we as professors or as the clinical coordinators that they're trying to do, that they're trying to teach, they're trying to, like, prepare them for when it's not always a real life situation. I'm not a professor. I haven't been a professor. I would maybe love to be someday. I think it's a hard job, because you're trying to get these students ready for the job, and it's hard to learn that in a classroom. It is very difficult to learn the job in a classroom, and that's the biggest issue, I think, is you you can't and so trying to learn how to do the job through a sinew case just doesn't cut it. And so for me, that's where I think that mentorship piece really comes into play. I mean, think about how many other things we do that need mentorship, even just when the within the fields, right, how many other things we do in the field where it's like, okay, well, you need to have some sort of mentorship, even for like, PhD programs and things like that. Like, you need some sort of mentorship through those things to be able to really get you to that end goal. And so it should be no different within these other settings and things that we're talking about. And I think it's really lacking when we're not setting them up for success by just saying, oh, here do us any UK and then they're all the same. And, like in skilled nursing, I don't even have those assessments. I don't do those. I get 30 to 40 minutes maybe to do an assessment. I don't have time to do that. I don't even have time to do the full, like Boston naming test half the time. You know what I mean, it's like, I'm not going in there and doing a full lab or things like that. Like, I just don't think that the mentorship for those things, and then the clinical aspect is meeting is meeting up with the coursework piece all the time. And so I think that's where, again, that bridge needs to be gap. And I think, yeah, Nikki talked about kind of bridging that gap a little bit last week too, where it's like, there's this disconnect that's sort of his is that we're seeing. And I do think a lot of things happened with COVID, honestly, like, I think a lot of this having this new cases, and stuff like that, like, I think it got tricky because there are a lot of placements that don't happen for medical field, and it makes it really difficult.

Jeanette Benigas

15:10

I want to talk about some challenges and red flags with you. Obviously, we've all put out there. There's different mentorship models. So we've got, like, one on one mentorship. There's group mentorship opportunities available. Some are paid. Some are peer to peer. Some are formalized through a university or formalized through your employer when you have that new grad who is entering the field for their nine month experience. So there's all different kinds of mentorship, but there's also all different kinds of people looking for mentorship, whether it be during that experience, when you're searching for a job, or three years in, or maybe 10 years in when you want to transition from one setting, whether it's school to medical or medical to peds or whatever. So people are looking for mentorship for many different reasons. Do you have any advice? How can a clinician, no matter what model is happening for them right at that time? How can a clinician know if the mentorship they're getting before it starts is ethical and effective?

Jeanette Benigas

16:15

Oh,

Lynsie Erickson

16:15

Oh, I think it's hard to know beforehand. I think it's really difficult. And I think it's also hard when, especially if you're going to pay for something to know, when it's really ethical, right? Like, how do you vet that necessarily? I think part of it is like word of mouth. I think part of it is also like a gut feeling. I think a lot of times we kind of know, okay. I feel like this person understands what they're doing. I feel like this person knows, right? If it's some random person that you don't know who they are and you just their cousins, sisters, whatever nephew was, like, Oh, I know this person. And you should be like, I wouldn't maybe do that. But if it's someone that you know is established and you you feel like they're going to be providing you something that is truly beneficial, then I think I would say, go for it. I think the ethical piece does get kind of hard, because there's, there's a lot there. You know what I mean? Um, one is, if you're paying for it. What are you paying for? Two is the advice that you're getting accurate, because you don't know you don't know what you don't know. So you could be getting advice about, oh, do this XYZ thing. And you think that that's right, and then it's not. So I do think that that's really tricky to to know when it's right. I think a lot of the times like using your gut, like, go with what your gut tells you. I think that's kind of one of the best ways. And if you're not sure, ask around, yeah, join some Facebook group. If you're scared about that post, anonymously. Join the medical SLP mentorship group that I have and ask those questions. Be like, Hey, like, I'm not sure my my supervisor for my you know, thing is asking me to do this or saying this, what do we think? Like, is this ethical? Right? Ask other people. Ask other professionals that are in the field and get, get their advice whether you're paying for that service or not. But I would say, ask around if you're not sure, and your gut is kind of going I don't, I don't really know. Ask. There's a lot of people out there. You Me, I mean, so many people. I could list 10 different people right now that you could message, speak to their base and ask a question, and they'll get back to you. Might take them a couple days, but they'll, they'll, they'll help you out like we are a field of kinds people for the most part. You know, there's a couple bad apples in there, but we want to try to help. And so yeah, I think ethically, like, if you're not sure, get other people's advice.

Jeanette Benigas

18:50

Yeah, I have some things I can contribute to, just some ideas. I think this can happen in different scenarios. So if you're a student, for example, when I was an externship coordinator, one time, I got a call from a student in the middle of the day crying, Doctor Benigas, I don't think I'm learning the right things here. And like, My heart broke because I knew where she was at and I knew she probably wasn't learning the right things there. And so my first question was, like, are you in the building? And she was like, yeah. I said, Okay. I said, get through the day just, you know, take it all in. Let's reconvene when you've left the building so we can have an open conversation without the risk of you being overheard. And we did. And so, like, in that case, she called me and we talked about it. So if you're a student getting unethical mentorship, you can't necessarily leave the job or leave the position, and I think your externship coordinators at your university are going to handle this in different ways, because we're all not all cut from the same cloth. So if you're one of those people on that end of it, be very sensitive to how you're responding to these things. If you're a student. Just know pulling a student from a placement is a big deal. And I did that in in the all of the years that I did externship coordinating. I did that one time, one time I pulled a student, and it was bad enough that it had to happen for her own well being, and it was enough that it was justified. So you might have to sustain that, and then you just know that what you're learning isn't accurate, and then find the professors who taught you the accurate information to debrief. Now, in this case, she was in a hospital, and I was her med SLP professor and her dysphagia professor and her externship coordinator. So I was able to check in weekly, and we could talk about what she was seeing, and it turned into a great critical thinking exercise for her, because she knew what she was seeing probably wasn't best practice, and then we could talk about what would have been, and she probably got way more out of it than she would have had she been in a placement that was like teaching her everything, right? Because I think when you take on those scenarios yourself and really think through them critically, you learn more, right? So that's that's an example of, if you're not getting good mentorship and you're stuck in a situation, then we have this nine month new grad situation. Can you change jobs in the middle of that? Absolutely, yes, you can, but not everybody is going to have the ability to change jobs. You might live in a rural area. There might not be a job available, maybe you can't move. So you also might be stuck. You can change mentors within your job, but maybe that's not available, then you have the dynamics of these are also your coworkers. It gets sticky. And so I'd say in that case, if you're not able to change jobs or mentors, then you do find someone else, like I gave just the scenario, just now with the students, then you try to set something like that up too. But also remember that your mentor in your nine month post graduate experience is not your boss. They can give you all of the advice in the world, but you do not have to do what they say. Yep. So just because they're telling you something doesn't mean you then have to go and do it. So remember that too, that you're an autonomous clinician at this point, do what you want and do what you think is right. And then in the scenario where maybe you're paying for something, just make sure that there is an out in the contract that you are signing, that if you don't feel like this is a good fit for you, that you can exit that relationship with at least a partial refund, like if you're buying a six month package and you don't want it after two months, should you get a full refund? No, but you should get a pro rated refund. So just make sure that to protect yourself, that if you find it's not a good fit for you, or if it's not ethical that you can exit that relationship with some of your money back that. I mean, that's that's how I would probably approach all of those scenarios. But take that with a grain of salt.

Lynsie Erickson

23:13

Yeah. No, I agree. I also circle back to what you were saying about during that nine month period. I think it's a really good thing to remember that that supervisor that you have, that you were assigned, that for the most part, you didn't pick that supervisor is someone that's there to guide you and to sign off on your documentation and to help you. But that doesn't mean that you still cannot reach out to other people for other advice, right? Right? Either within your job, within your hospital, within your clinic space, within your whatever, free people on social media, wherever on Facebook, groups, things like that, a paid mentorship, right? Any of those types of things. It doesn't mean that you still can't seek out other mentorship on your own, that person that they assigned you is not like your only go to person. I've had so many of my grad student interns who have called me so many times. Hey, my supervisor told me this. But what do you think? What's your advice, right? Because they want that second opinion, and sometimes I agree and sometimes I don't, but it's nice that they're also thinking critically to say, Hey, I agree with kind of what they're telling me, but I want to know what your opinion is as well. And so I also then, like, okay, great. Like, I taught you well enough to critically think about the fact that if you don't necessarily agree with what they're saying, to seek out another opinion, to think, I don't know. I don't feel solid about this. I'm not quite sure. Let me get somebody else's opinion. As a clinician too, as a new clinician, you you should. Do that, rather than just blindly following what someone's telling you, because they might not be right. So I think it's actually beneficial a lot of the time to do that and and to try to seek other mentorship in that, yeah, because, yeah, you know, we not to say that everyone is right or everyone is wrong, but I mean, even with documentation right, we all document differently, not to say that one thing is right or one thing is wrong all the time. Sometimes there is not great things, you know what I mean, but like, there's different ways to say things, and so finding ways, you know, this person does this thing, or this person says this thing, and melding it all together like, I think there's ways to find benefit in having multiple people be able to give you that input. It's never a bad thing.

Jeanette Benigas

25:52

You're right. So in thinking about those new grads, you said, you know, a lot of times the mentor is assigned,and I know that you and I were Med, SLPs, so we can only speak to this like med. SLP, part of it, but hopefully people who are thinking pediatrics can extract some valuable information here for a new grad who's looking for a job, who knows they're going to have to get mentorship so they're transitioning into the real world. They've got their degree, they're now autonomous, but they still have this last piece for their state licensure and maybe the CCC, if they're going to be purchasing it, what kind of red flags should they be looking for when they're going through the interview process at not so much about the job, but maybe as it relates to the mentorship that they're going to get, because they don't again, they don't get assigned, or they don't get to pick, most of the time they're assigned. Do we have any advice on what the questions they could ask or the things they could be doing?

Lynsie Erickson

26:56

Oh, definitely, I always so every time again, my grad student is going to go do a job, I'm like, you should definitely ask at least these three questions. How is that supervisor going to be giving you feedback? So what is, what is their form of feedback? Are they going to be calling you? Are they going to send you text messages? Are they going to email you? What is their format for giving you any sort of feedback? First of all, because you want to know how that's going to happen. Second of all, what is their likely schedule going to be for when they're going to be in contact with you? How often are they going to be able to come and see you? I will say, as someone who has been a supervisor now twice, there's going to be some flexibility with it. I don't know how many times I've said, Oh yeah, I'll come on Tuesday, and then I'm like, Oh no, that's not going to work. I have to come on Thursday, right? Like, there's obviously going to be flexibility, but getting an idea of what is your schedule look like and what's your availability going to be how, how are you going to be able to be with coming to see me? Are you going to be able to meet the requirement needed? Now? Again, sometimes they're going to say yes, and it might not always be a yes, but you want to at least make sure that they understand what that requirement is, and that they're at least telling you that they're going to meet that because, trust me, I've had other people that were like, Oh no, I kid you not, as of like, eight months ago, I know someone who their supervisor was like, Oh no, I can still do teletherapy. Like, I can still supervise you via, like, yes, kid you not. We're like, no, that's not what the regulations say anymore. Like, you have to be here in person now, like this. We're not, we're not doing this. You, need to come and see me. And she was like, calling me and being like, what do I do? It was this whole big issue. So having those conversations and making sure that that supervisor at least knows that they need to come and see you, I think, is really important. Also making sure that that supervisor isn't someone that's like, two states away that's not just going to come and, like, sign your documentation and see you, like, once a month, you know what I mean. So like, just making sure that you're having those conversations about your expectation for when they're going to come physically see you. And then I think the third one is when I have a question, right as the student, when I have a question and I need to be in contact with you. Are you going to be available? So like, if I need you during the day, is your availability open enough that, like, if I need you, you're available, or is it like, Oh, if I send you an email, you're not going to get back to me until the end of the day. So I think having that communication too of like, can I call you? Can I text you? What is that open communication going to be like, and how quickly can I expect to get a response from you? Because some mentors were like, no. The supervisor was like, send me an email and I'll get back to you at the end of the day. But as a clinician, you're sitting there like, I have to do this email and I have to get this done, and I like, I need an answer. So having that sort of communication too, of like, you know, can I send you a text? Can I call you? Are you going to be available in an acute setting or in SNF? I think it's a little bit easier sometimes, when you're in like, you know, acute rehab and you've got these like, 60 minute back to back sessions, it can be a little bit little bit harder. So I think sometimes the setting just depends too. But I think asking at least those three questions are going to help to set you up for success. But that's good advice. There's a lot of other questions, yeah, but I think those are, like, solid three questions to at least get you going, and then again, use that gut feeling of like, okay, how am I feeling about this? Do I feel like the responses in these answers are good, or are these answers like, I'm not feeling too confident about this, because really that that mentorship too, even if the job sounds great, if that mentorship piece sounds like it's not going to be great, I don't know that I would take the job same, because that mentorship is so important and crucial, it can really, like, make or break how successful you are in general.

Jeanette Benigas

31:32

I'm gonna build on that. I think sticking with those three questions is great, so I'm not gonna add more questions, but what I would say, and what I would advise is maybe not do this at the beginning of the interview process, but if you get to the point where they're offering you a position, I personally would then ask to connect with who that mentor is going to be, and Ask those three questions to the actual mentor, because a recruiter gets paid based on hiring you and how much your salary is going to be, right? Like, everybody has different bonuses and but sometimes recruiters are going to tell you what they think you need to hear in order for you to take the job, or it's not a recruiter, it's somebody else with, it's HR or something, who is hiring you, but not the one in in there actually doing the thing. And so I would connect personally with the mentor and ask those same three questions, if the answers are grossly different from when you asked in the interview process, and now you're talking to the mentor and those answers are different, that's a problem. And I want to be clear that if you're going to purchase the CCC and you're following only the standards of the CF requirement. Your mentor is only expected to see you face to face one every third so that means one time face to face every three months. That is the minimum requirement of the American Speech Language and Hearing Association is that your mentor sees you three times in the state of Ohio, where I live, it is much more. I think it's something like 1818, interactions like that. So make sure you're really getting a good grip on how much interaction you're gonna have face to face, because three times in nine months is not enough.

Lynsie Erickson

33:45

Nope. And I do agree. I think I also would not really take a job unless you can physically have either a phone call or, like, a zoom call with that mentor on your own, like if you can't, one, tour the facility and to speak directly to that mentor, two red flags, two huge red flags, right there. It was a really big issue a couple years ago was being able to come into facilities, especially medical facilities. They weren't always letting a lot of people come. So it was, it was tricky, but that you can go like, go go to facility, go in tour. It be there, physically walk the facility, talk to the people, see what the culture is like, and speak to that mentor, talk to them, get an idea of how they are like. It can really make or break your nine months. It's really impactful.

Speaker 1

34:39

specifically

Jeanette Benigas

34:39

I know you said very specifically when we started, there was one thing you wanted to talk about that your passion. About that you're passionate about, but I and I'm watching the time, so I want to ask one more question, and then we'll move to like this next topic. So we know we hear all of these horror stories. If you hang out on social media, you see them, and it's always these situations where mentorship goes wrong, and I think when mentorship goes wrong, there's a huge impact, both for our students, our clients and our patients. And so you and I again, have the information for like patients, but when mentorship goes wrong, what do you think the consequences are for patients?

Jeanette Benigas

35:20

I can start you want I got a soapbox. You want me to go? Yeah, I was like, honestly, I feel like we should have started with this question, because I could talk about this for like 30 minutes. Yeah, you go. Because otherwise I will probably just ramble. Okay, so I think that there is this expectation that we place on ourselves as clinicians. And so I think as we get older, we realize, no, this isn't the case. But I think newer, younger clinicians maybe have this thought, Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not a younger, newer clinician anymore. I can only know what I can only talk about my personal experience, but I also see it is that clinicians feel like they should know everything by now, and we hear the word imposter syndrome thrown around a lot, my imposter syndrome probably didn't start to dissipate until year 15. Okay, it's and I still struggle with that in other spaces and with other things, but new clinicians, number one, shouldn't know everything we know that they shouldn't. That's why you're mentored. Is a lifelong growing process, and I think where it starts to harm patients is when a clinician does ask for help, does ask for mentorship and is given, not evidence based advice or best practice or standard of care, and the clinician, the newer clinician, doesn't know the difference. And I think the consequence for the patient sometimes can be harm, because I got a message from a former former student the other day. When my students graduate, I give them I say, first of all, call me Jeanette or colleagues. Now, I'm not your professor. This is my phone number. Here's how to reach me. Here's my private email address. You can reach me forever. I will give you advice and mentorship forever if you need something. And does every student take take me up on that note, but there's a good handful that do. And so someone reached out to me the other day and said, I have a dementia case. This person lives in a group home. This person has right lower lobe pneumonia. And the question was, What are the implications for dysphagia? What should I do? And the advice that she has was given was basically, well, right lower lobe pneumonia is aspiration pneumonia, and this person has dementia, and you you have to just think of the liquid, you know, very old school stuff. And so my advice was, well, can right lower lobe pneumonia indicate aspiration pneumonia, sure, but it is not the diagnostic criterion for aspiration pneumonia. And I asked her a bunch of questions, because I don't always just give answers. I said, I'm going to make you walk through this critically, right? Because I don't just give advice as a professor without a classroom. Now my classroom is now our text message. So I said, Okay, let's talk about the factors of this patient. Where does this patient live? A group home. Okay, what are the goals of care? Is it quality of life like? Are we just trying to make sure this person is okay? Is it quantity of life? The answer was both quality and quantity. And I said, that can't be that's a conflicting goal, one or the other, for us to frame this diagnosis and treatment. Who's making the decisions? Is there a POA? Well, the POA is the group home. There is not a family involved. This person's in a different state, so I was assuming maybe this is like a ward of the state, or something like that, where a lawyer is making the decisions. And I said, Okay, I happen to know, from my own experience that when you do your evaluation, whatever recommendations you make within that report, that group home is going to take as gold and God, and that is going to be the order. And we don't know that this person is going to get quality speech therapy in this home health setting, or speech therapy at all. So what you say could be the predictor of what happens to this person for the rest of her life. And so then I gave her advice. I said, number one, yes, you need to do a swallow study. Number two, you need to see, look for patterns. If this person aspirates one time, and you recommend a thick and liquid this person could be on a thickened liquid for the rest of her life. Those are the things that I walk through. I said, do the study and come back to me before you write the recommendations and let's talk about what happened. That's the kind of advice I gave. But the initial advice was like, don't even bother with the modified barium swallow study. She's in an acute hospital. She has access to it. Why wouldn't she just give it right? Like that was horrible advice. The consequence for the patient could have been poor quality of life, dehydration, increased pressure, shoulders, if she's bed bound. You know, so many things, just do the study. Just my advice was, just do the study. Let's see what it says, and then I'll help you creatively, give the recommendations that are going to take care of this patient best, knowing the situation that this patient is in. And so that's my example. You could be causing real harm when mentorship goes wrong. And the tricky part is, if you're a new grad and you're stuck in that situation, I think what you said earlier is reach out to someone else. And that's what this person did. She reached out to me because she she had a gut feeling that the advice she was given wasn't right.

Lynsie Erickson

41:11

Yeah, and that's and that's exactly what it is you're we're taught right? We're taught whatever it is in grad school, and then we go out and do this job, and then we either have this idea that something is conflicting, or we just have this gut feeling that something doesn't feel right. And when that feeling happens, that's what I'm saying. Just reach out to someone again, like email a professor, and maybe email three professors, and then reach out to somebody else on Facebook and then message someone else and like, get multiple people's advice, because you're probably going to get different responses. But if you're seeing a trend, then you'll know like, kind of which direction to go in. Getting bad advice is going to happen, and not everybody is going to treat exactly the same. You're gonna have, like you said, some older clinicians who are probably going to treat very differently. It's also hard because slight tangential comment, but you also have a lot of doctors who are going to treat very differently as well. So when you then become a clinician, and you're then trying to work on an IDT with doctors who are going to make recommendations as well and don't necessarily agree with you. And you have to then try to say why you think your recommendation is the better recommendation. And then you're saying, Well, I don't know why. I just think this is what I need. You need someone who then can tell you right, give you that EVP and help you figure out why what you're saying is what you need. You need that mentor. You need someone that can say, like, No, this is why, right? Because sometimes we learn it and we're like, oh yeah, I know I shouldn't thicken at bedside but then being able to follow up and say like, but this is why. And so coming back with all that information and standing your ground and saying, like, No, I I'm the professional, and I know I know what I'm talking about, even if in the back of your head that imposter syndrome is kicking in, and you're like, I don't know what I'm talking about. And then coming back and if you're wrong, being like, Hey, I was wrong. Other changes will comment that I will make, but really quick, because I think this is also really important. Just as far as being a new grad and trying to kind of figure out some of that stuff, I think one of the biggest things to remember, too, is just when you're making some of those recommendations, when you're doing some of that, you're basing it on the amount of information you have, you're making a decision based on what you're given. A lot of the time people don't have access to instrumental studies. It's great when we do, but when we don't have access to that, we have to figure it out based on what we do have access to. And so that mentorship is going to look very different based on what you have access to. And so when you when you don't have good mentorship, and you're having to kind of make those decisions, base it on the information you do have, make the best decision you can possibly make. But then circle back and say, Okay, I made this decision. Is this still the base the best decision? Right? Ask the doctor for a chest X ray, if it's a dysphagia patient, and say, Okay, did did I make a decision and now the patient has pneumonia? Okay? Maybe the decision I made, or the diet texture I chose maybe wasn't the best option, right? Like, there's ways that you can kind of figure some of that out, even if you don't have an instrumental but those are also things where, with good mentorship. You can learn some of that stuff, and you can learn how to kind of offset, okay, I don't have access to instrumentl, but how do I lean into some of these other things that I can use to help guide my confidence in what my recommendation is? Yeah, it's hard. Or it's really, really hard.

Jeanette Benigas

45:01

I'll jump in with another one that no one really ever talks about or sees that asking for a BUN level to see if the patient is dehydrated. Yes, is another one that you can ask too. So, yeah, that's great advice. That's really good advice is that if you don't have the access, or if a plus spot on, okay, we need to start thinking about wrapping up, but I know there's one thing that you said at the before we started recording that you're you're really passionate about, and that you're thinking about moving towards, is mentoring the mentor. And we talked about this in our episode 80 with the girls from the mentorship collective, and mentoring the mentor a little bit. My first question is, if someone wants to be a mentor, where should they start? And maybe I'll say a good mentor, because to start, all you really have to do is, like, tell your company, yeah, I'll take a student, or yeah, I'll take a CF. That's how you start, right? That's not that hard. But if someone wants to be a solid mentor, that's doing a really good job, because none of us are taught this, and the only example we have is the example we were given when we were mentored, and it might not have been that good. What should people do?

Lynsie Erickson

46:13

I think first off is based off what you did have, right like, what are the things that you felt like were good with the mentors that you had. Think about what, what do you feel like was good? What, what worked well, and then think about like, what didn't work well, and kind of list out some of those things. The other really big thing is find mentorship. Like, if you want to be a good mentor. Find someone to mentor you. I'm working on trying to set up something to be able to really offer that as, like, a, you know, either a program or something that's really structured, but even if you just are like, Hey, I'm not quite sure what to do, and I want to do this. Do you have any event like, set up a call with me, do a consultation, like something, find somebody else, right, talk to someone who's done it before, get advice from someone. The other thing I would say, too is, let's say you don't even go that route, and let's say your job is like, hey, we took a student for you, and we're giving you a student, and you didn't really have a choice. The biggest thing that I would say is sit down with that student that you're getting in the first week and just talk to them and figure out what's going to work best for the both of you. Sit down for like, 2030, minutes. First of all, be humble. Okay, I'm new to this. I don't know what I'm doing right level with them. Because if you try to come at them and be like, Yeah, I'm in charge here. It's not going to work like it's it's just not because they're they're not going to respect you. It's going to all crumble. So come at it knowing that you are also learning from them just as much as they are learning from you. It is a relationship where both of you are going to learn something? I learned something new from every single student, I think, every mentee I have. I learned something from them. So come at it. From that standpoint, sit down with them and say, Look, this is what I'm trying to offer you. What do you need from me? What are you looking for? How can we make this work the best way possible? Have some of those conversations. Talk about feedback, what they want, what works for you. Talk about what you guys think that that 810, 12, whatever week, course, is going to look like, and get an idea. Have regular check ins as well, and just be open if you think something didn't go well, talk about it. Have open communication. Don't shy away. Have that open communication. Just try to be like, as open as you can to about if you think you made a mistake about something, be like, Hey, I could have done that better, right? Like, don't. Don't put yourself on this high horse and make it seem like you have to be perfect, because they're also going to learn more by knowing that you made mistakes.

Jeanette Benigas

49:08

Boom. So good, so so good. You know, something that's really lacking that I literally just thought of is that we have all of these spaces on social media to talk about, hey, I have this patient, or hey, I hate this job, or hey, I want to transition out, or hey, I want to transition to a different setting. There's no spaces for how can I mentor better on Facebook? Somebody needs to run with that. Adming a group is a big job. You know being humble and knowing that we all have space to learn and grow is so important, and I think there are so many people who are becoming more and more and more passionate about giving good mentorship. After last week's episode, I got a bunch of messages that said something to that effect, that you. Hey, that was great. I mentoring is really becoming a passion of mine. I really want to give back in that way, and we're all just sort of floundering. There's not a space to connect and grow. So we don't even really have a place to point people to right now. But I know you have ideas. The girls from the mentorship collective have ideas, and hopefully in the next couple years, we'll see something emerge that's going to make us all better. Because right now, Asha requires, if you're if you're doing this with the CCC, that you take a supervision course, a two hour supervision course. And last week, on on my on my content somewhere, I saw somebody say, yeah, a two hour supervision course every couple of years just isn't going to cut it. And I responded and said, Are you sitting down? Because the requirement actually is one two hour mentorship course period? Yeah, that means, if I take it today, in 20 years, I don't ever in the next 20 years, I don't ever have to take one again. And that's crazy.

Lynsie Erickson

51:10

Yeah, the, the guidelines need to change, and this is that's the other thing that I have started to get really passionate about, too. Is also, like we I also think that there needs to be either competency competency testing for supervisors, because I think there's a lot of supervisors who are supervising and giving outdated information. And I also think if you're going to supervise, you need to be taking CEUs that are specific to the things that you're supervising in. I think it needs to be mandated more that these supervisors are actually up to date on the things that they're going to be then teaching like there's just, there's no standardization, there's no there's no accountability. And I think that's part of the problem is these mentors are just out here willy nilly doing whatever the heck they want, because no one is then keeping them accountable, and our newer clinicians are really paying the price. Yeah, and like you had said before, I think we're now seeing this turnout of clinicians who are now starting to really question, okay, I'm getting this advice, but I don't think this is right, because the shift is starting to happen and what they're being taught in the classroom, but it hasn't really caught up in the clinical setting yet, and so it's really this hard situation right now that we're going through where things aren't matching, and if these are going to get really ugly in the next couple of years, or it's going to be beautiful, and we're just going to see a lot of changes, and things are going to be amazing, I think there's just this really big shift, because things just aren't matching up.

Jeanette Benigas

52:56

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Somebody else commented regarding that accountability piece too, that it really kind of stinks that these mentors have the power and control to say, No, I'm not signing off, but you don't have the power and control as a student or new grad to say, but you freaking sucked. Yes, right? Yes, there's an imbalance of power, and there's no system. When you have someone who's doing a piss poor job, and you're kind of going against the grain, not doing what they say. And hopefully, these situations are few and far between, but they do exist. There's no system to get out of that.

Lynsie Erickson

53:45

Yeah

Jeanette Benigas

53:45

it's abusive

Lynsie Erickson

53:47

But it is, and there's no, there's no, like, reporting system. I mean,

Jeanette Benigas

53:51

Lynsie Erickson

53:51

right? When you're when you're still in grad school, you can go to your you can go to the school, and you can go to the person who's helping you with placements, and you can talk to them and ask for assistance, but as soon as you graduate, it's done. And this is, this is where for me, getting into a really larger, you know, a scale topic. But this is where for me, part of me feels like we also need to revamp the whole thing. And we almost need to have it be where our degree is, sort of like how the AUD program is. And we need that, that externship to be part of our grad program, and it needs to be wrapped all into one so that we have someone to help keep those supervisors accountable during that externship, really, so that way the grad students are covered. The grad students have that extra help to make sure that they are backed by a little bit of extra support, because otherwise, they're out in the world and they're doing whatever. They don't have any support. They don't have anyone to help. Have their back, you're right. They have no say. They have no control. There's no one to help them. They're just out there slandering around, and they're like, oh, okay, well, I just have to do whatever you say, because you, you control my life right now.

Speaker 1

55:02

Unfortunately,

Jeanette Benigas

55:02

Unfortunately, I think I talked about this last week, so if I did, you get to hear it twice. But not every externship in university even has the back of the students. The university that I left, we had a clinician that three students in a row complained about all even different issues. So it was these wide, big scale issues. And then going into the next year, we're putting her in the clinic. Not only are we going to use her as a placement, but now we're bringing her into the clinic to also supervise on campus, and I said something in the faculty meeting, and I I literally got yelled at by the clinic director. What's my problem? She's nice. Sure she's nice. I Great. I'm glad she's nice, but she also hasn't kept up. She's giving bad advice. She's doing things that are disrespectful and inappropriate to students and and in those cases, I heard the chair say, well, she's we've heard this before. Lynsie, well, she's from a different time, exactly. That is no excuse. I don't care. Nope, I don't care what time she's from, that does not give you the right to talk to our students like that, not at all. And unfortunately, that program isn't the exception.

Lynsie Erickson

56:32

No, there's too many out there that are like that, and you're right. And again, that is a systemic problem that's happening where part of it also is, well, we don't have enough bodies, so we're going to keep them, because if we get rid of them, we don't have anybody else to fill that space, and that's exactly it. So we'd rather keep them. We'd rather keep them, even though it's bad. We need to keep them because we don't have another body to fill that space. Yep, yeah. So yep, which is why become a mentor. You guys seek mentorship and become a mentor, because we need good mentors. Come on, we can. We can do better, yeah, if we do this together, I know we can.

Jeanette Benigas

57:15

Yeah, love it. Great place to end. Lynsie, tell us where people can find you online.

Lynsie Erickson

57:22

So @thespeechpack on Instagram, follow me. If you want any merch, you can go to thespeechpack.com and then the Facebook group is the Medical SLP Mentorship. And then if you are looking for any sort of mentorship as well, I know that Jeanette will have that link. Those links are also on the Instagram page, so you can find all of that on there. Everything's kind of in that spot on Instagram, but that Facebook group is a really great spot too.

Jeanette Benigas

57:51

Yeah, and I'm just gonna spell it. It's just in case it's not coming through clearly. It's speech pack, P-A-C-K, as in kitty, not path like speech pathology speech pack. And remember, there are other mentorship programs for med SLPs that are probably much larger than yours. There are multiple ones out there, so make sure you're finding Lynsie and not some of the others, okay, and you're getting married in two weeks. So number one, congratulations. Number two, I introduced you as Lynsie Erickson, and this is that will still be your name when this podcast drops, but if people are listening to this three weeks later, I didn't change my name, and so names are important to me. So are you changing your name? Should they be looking for someone else in a month from now? Or what are you going to keep Erickson online and change it privately? What's your plan?

Lynsie Erickson

58:52

Yeah, I mean, I think online, it'll probably stay Erickson for a little while. It will change. It will be Cordero. So it will probably eventually fade out and it will change. But you know, we'll slowly probably start making some of those changes. And you'll, you'll see it change here and there. But yeah, it will, it will change eventually.

Jeanette Benigas

59:12

So you know, you're looking for a Lynsie, L-Y-N-S-I-E, so look for that, and you've got the right person Exactly. It is spelled weird. So look for the weird one, and you'll know it's neat. Yeah. And then the last piece is, I, before we record, I always tell everybody, hey, if you want to throw out a promo code to our listeners, we will do that. We have started compiling those. You will see them pinned at the top of all of our content, we will not be able to change out the slide deck every time we get a new code. So always you can go to fixslp.com. we have a place in our menu where you can go and see all of the updated codes plus links to their socials and their website and whatever podcast they've been on, so you can hear more about these folks. So you'll be able to see that with Lynsie's. Lynsie's, I think just because we just got it started, I might change out the slide deck one more time, like this week sometime, and then it's probably just going to stay there for a while, like maybe through the summer, and then we'll change it again. So just disclosure on that. Make sure you're looking at the website for the full list. So what do you got for people? So you can use the code FIXSLP for 10% off the mentorship packages. So there's a few different packages on there. You can do, like a quick 30 minute call, if you just need, like, a quick little something with me. There's packages where you can do three sessions that are hour long. You can also do group calls. So let's say it's like you and someone else and you guys need something together. You guys can do like a little group package, and do that. That's all on the link. You can fill out the questionnaire, and then all those prices and packages are on there as well. There's a few different options. So fill out the questionnaire. You can do a quick consultation call with me as well, and we can figure out what's going to work best for you. And then I will also give you a code for some merch to that. Just in case anybody wants anything. I'll give you guys a code, and you guys can go on there and get a little discount.

Jeanette Benigas

01:01:17

So what is that code going to be FIXSLP as well?

Lynsie Erickson

01:01:20

It will be FIXSLP, and that'll be 15% off for merch. I'll probably have that run for a while.

Jeanette Benigas

01:01:26

Cool. All right, guys, FIXSLP, as always, disclosure. When you use an affiliate code, the person giving you the affiliate code also gets a little bit of money. That is standard across all industries. We've been telling you for a long time we're trying to find creative ways to get paid. I don't know why we've been shy about sharing these codes all in one place up until this point, but we have enough now where we need to step into this. So we do make a small commission when you use the code, but that is not at any cost to you, just the person selling their products and services are making less money. So we really appreciate your support for Fix SLP and our Fearless Fixers, and for just being around since the beginning, and I know what you've been thinking about doing. So you know, we get married, get that off your plate, and I'm expecting some really great things in the next couple years. So good luck. Have a beautiful wedding day, and we'll see you next week. Guys, thanks for fixing it!

Jeanette Benigas

01:02:31

it. You.

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