TASSEL Research

Biased and stigmatizing language in common in healthcare documentation. Its use can reinforce unfair assumptions about the client and worsen health disparities. While there is a growing base of research that discusses how clinicians can avoid using stigmatizing language in their own writing, there is little research on how to teach student clinicians to recognize and correct biased language in their writing. This is especially important because healthcare students are usually learning the norms of clinical writing for the first time, using their clinical educators’ writing as models. If biased language is often embedded in clinical documentation, and if students are copying the wording they’ve seen their educators use, then students risk perpetuating biases they do not even hold.

This series of projects focuses on how to teach students to recognize and fix biased language in their clinical writing.
 

The clinical doctorate in speech-language pathology (SLPD) is a new degree in this field. While other healthcare professions introduced similar degrees in the 1990s and early 2000s, the SLPD is still relatively new but is gradually becoming more popular.

Similar to other healthcare fields when they introduced their clinical doctorates (e.g., nursing, physical therapy), there has been some debate about the usefulness of the SLPD. Many people question whether clinical doctorates are beneficial overall. However, for other fields that have adopted clinical doctorates, benefits such as increased professional independence and higher professional recognition have been observed. Those who hold a professional doctorate may be more likely to take on leadership roles and have a voice in important decisions. This project investigates what SLPD students hope to achieve from the degree and whether they achieve those goals.