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Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Abstract

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Cross-curricular instruction is the process of combining information from two or more subjects within a single discipline in order to help students integrate the knowledge and skills they learn from separate courses. The purpose of this study was to examine how cross-curricular instruction impacted speech-language pathology (SLP) graduate students' knowledge, confidence, and clinical skills related to the assessment of patients with co-occurring diagnoses of dementia and dysphagia. Twenty-three SLP master's students completed a questionnaire before and after receiving cross-curricular instruction on how to assess dysphagia in persons with dementia. The questionnaire examined self-reported knowledge and level of confidence for assessing these patients. The cohort was then divided into two groups to compare their clinical skills using a standardized simulation. Group 1 completed the simulation prior to cross-curricular instruction and Group 2 completed the simulation following the cross-curricular instruction. After instruction, students reported significantly higher self-ratings of knowledge and confidence for assessing patients with dementia and dysphagia. Clinical skills were higher post-instruction, but the difference was not statistically significant. These results suggest that even a single lecture about how to approach patients with concomitant disorders such as dysphagia and dementia may be beneficial for increasing the knowledge, level of confidence, and clinical skills of SLP graduate students. Cross-curricular instruction should continue to be investigated as a potential way to improve critical thinking and clinical skills of SLP graduate students in order to better prepare new SLPs to serve a variety of complex patients, particularly in medical settings.

DOI

10.59620/2644-2132.1173

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