Teamwork : a study of Australian and US student speech-language pathologists

In the discipline of speech-language pathology little is known about the explicit and implicit team skillstaught within university curricula. This study surveyed 281 speech-language pathology students todetermine a baseline of their perceived ability to participate in interprofessional teams. The studentswere enrolled in programs in Australia and the USA and were surveyed about their perceptions of theirattitudes, knowledge and skills in teamwork. MANCOVA analysis for main effects of age, universityprogram and clinical experience showed that age was not significant, negating the perception that lifeexperiences improve perceived team skills. Clinical experience was significant in that students withmore clinical experience rated themselves more highly on their team abilities. Post Hoc analysisrevealed that Australian students rated themselves higher than their US counterparts on theirknowledge about working on teams, but lower on attitudes to teams; all students perceived that theyhad the skills to work on teams. These results provide insight about teamwork training components incurrent speech-language pathology curricula. Implications are discussed with reference to enhancinguniversity training programs.