Written by Madeline Cruice

SURVEY DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 4^TH DECEMBER 2018

It is possibly more than a little sad to get excited by a journal article, but I’ve recently seen @ClinAcSLT’s tweet of Tuesday last week (30^thOctober) and been really buoyed by them tweeting this BMJ paper: Does the engagement of clinicians and organisations in research improve healthcare performance: A three-stage review, by Boaz and colleagues https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/12/e009415 (🔓 open access – freely available).

This review shows from what looks exhausting to be dealing with 10,239 records initially identified, and whittled down to 33 papers included in the review, that the majority report positive findings from engagement, with improvements being noted mostly in improved processes of care, and then improved health outcomes. This comes at a time that is crucial for me as the primary investigator on LUNA, leading phase 2 of LUNA, and desperate to boost our respondent numbers of SLTs working in aphasia rehabilitation for our LUNA SLT survey www.city.ac.uk/luna-survey.

What we’ve been doing so far

We’ve been tweeting like mad and bothering BAS, RCSLT CENs, and Hubs on email for weeks now, and we’ve got a delightful completed respondent sample of 144 completed valid responses – THANK YOU to everyone who has made the time and engaged in this research. It’s important in research to employ robust and replicable methods, even for survey engagement, hence I haven’t been emailing my NHS pals on their gmail accounts (or NHS email addresses) to get the word out and boost numbers. However, our numbers are still low compared to what we would like to gain for this research.

Initially we estimated that there are probably approximately 500 SLTs working in adults, in the field of aphasia rehabilitation, who are members of BAS, CENs, and Hubs (allowing for approx. 200 overlap between national and local network memberships). And we hoped to get 350 of those, thereby giving us a 70% response rate, which is nice and tidy and ideal in the survey world. At the moment, we are on 41% of our target, which feels a little glass-half-empty, however in no way shape or form do I want to downplay the time and effort of those 144 individuals who have completed to date – I know how much effort it takes to make that time, and know that other activities will have gone un-done, or people will have left work late one day because of it, or they’ve needed to complete it at home meaning less TV or partner and family chat that night. Now, time pressures are never going to change, so my attempt here in the next paragraph is to highlight why taking time to complete the survey is worthwhile, drawing on some findings from Boaz et al, and hope to encourage people for a final last push in engaging in this research.

7 reasons why it’s worthwhile to do the survey

By engaging in research, Boaz and colleagues posit various mechanisms at play to improve ‘healthcare performance’ (be it processes of care, or healthcare outcomes, see Table 2 in their paper):

1. Just being involved in the processes of the research can improve performance, by going online, reading the survey questions, considering the relevance to you and your practice, and how important it is to your clients.

2. Engaging in the survey might change your attitudes or behaviours around discourse analysis, might prompt conversation with colleagues about discourse analysis and treatment with clients with aphasia, and might encourage someone to follow-up this point in a future journal club.

3. Completing the survey might help you be more aware and give more understanding of the specific research findings, when we start discussing and disseminating these more in 2019.

4. Completing the survey might make you interested in finding out more about the project, might encourage you to read one of the papers flagged online on our website https://blogs.city.ac.uk/luna or ask a question directly to our team: luna@city.ac.uk.

5. Being involved might help you apply the findings more (once they’re out) in your local setting with colleagues and in services.

6. Being involved in one relatively easy way of keeping up to date with an important and emerging area of rehabilitation research – complete the survey, and then go to our website and subscribe by email for automatic blog postings delivering project updates and relevant information to your preferred inbox.

7. Finally, the obvious one albeit altruistic but fundamental in the long run, being involved makes the research more relevant for practicing speech and language therapists and for services, which is what we here at LUNA are all about.

SO…… go on, grab a wine or grab a water, take 15-20 minutes with your mobile or laptop or tablet or desktop (what options!), and complete the survey. If you’ve done it already, please pass the survey link onto 1 or 2 colleagues who you know are also interested in engaging in research. http://www.city.ac.uk/luna-survey

On the 15th October, Madeline Cruice gave an Aphasia Institute webinar, entitled ‘Helping people tell richer stories using the words they want to use: Language Underpins Narrative in Aphasia’. The Aphasia Institute is a Canadian community-based centre of excellence, pioneering programs and practices that help people with aphasia learn how to communicate in new ways, and begin to navigate their own lives again. Through direct service, research, education and training, the Aphasia Institute has built a reputation as a world leader and educator in aphasia.

We’ve collected and shared some of the tweets from the webinar. You do not have to be on Twitter yourself, or log in to Twitter to access!

Nearly five months ago, at the beginning of May, we began work on the LUNA project.

We’ve made good progress on Phase 1 of LUNA (the theoretical phase), and also started Phase Two (the SLT survey phase). We’ve built the webpage you’re reading this on, and set up our Twitter feed. We’ll be using both platforms to share our progress on the project, and also information about storytelling and aphasia. Make sure you’ve subscribed so that you receive our blog postings automatically to your email address, and don’t need to check in here for updates.

Developing a theoretical model for change: LUNA Phase 1

Phase 1 of LUNA is led by PI Lucy Dipper, and was the focus of May- July and is on-going (it’s not a small task!). The aim of this phase was to develop a model of change for LUNA assessment and intervention, based on empirical and theoretical work completed to date, and we are well on the way to achieving this.

Lucy and Madeleine P. have synthesised existing discourse intervention literature. Some of this work is listed on our links and references page, and will be feeding into the next phases of the project. We are looking forward to sharing our work from this phase – the first opportunity to hear about it is listed at the end of this post.

We also hosted international visitors: LUNA collaborators Professor Mary Boyle and Associate Professor Deborah Hersh came to London, and spent an intensive week working with us in July. We spent time at City, discussing facets of the project in-depth; celebrating the project start with our consultants with aphasia; and having our first whole-team meeting face to face (no mean feat for an international team stretching across three continents!). Free-range LUNA discussions also took place across London: in Mary and Deborah’s beautiful Islington home away from home; in local cafes over coffee and lunch; perambulating through the dappled shade of Highgate Woods; and in the yellow glow of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, curated by Grayson Perry. We’re a team that believe that stimulation and varied locations help the mind think through things differently. A busy week, in which we covered a huge amount of ground, and built a lot of project momentum.

SLT Survey: LUNA Phase 2

Phase 2 of LUNA is currently in progress, and is led by PI Madeline Cruice.

We’ll be working on Phase Two until approx. the end of December. So far, we have written the SLT survey, piloted it, obtained ethics approval, and the survey is now live. We are grateful to Dr. Lucy Bryant from the University of Technology, Sydney who helped us enormously when we were developing the survey, very generously sharing her recent survey of discourse practice in Australia. Our rationale for drawing heavily on her questions are they had been tested already in an international study, but very few SLTs in the UK had taken part. Our thanks to Dr. Sarah Northcott, Katie Monelly, Dr. Anna Caute, and Josephine Wallanger at City, University of London, in the early testing stages of the survey.

The LUNA survey will be live, until 15^thNovember – please don’t wait to complete it, if you haven’t yet! The majority of our participants are reporting that the survey is quick to complete, and has taken them 15-20 minutes.

Upcoming  

• We are delighted to be sharing our first output from the LUNA project in the Autumn. Lucy will be presenting work from Phase 1 of LUNA at the British Aphasiology Society Conference in November, in Sheffield
• Madeline C. will be sharing LUNA work with the Aphasia Institute in Toronto via webinar on 15^th October

If you have any queries or requests for further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us by email or via Twitter.