The Indian ethnic group remains underrepresented despite the continued advancement in the field of speech and language therapy (SLT) in Malaysia. This study aims to investigate the perception of Malaysian Indian Pre-university students towards a career in the health sciences and specifically for the SLT profession. This was a cross-sectional study that employed convinience sampling method to recruit participants. A total of 110 Indian pre-university students from urban cities of Kuala Lumpur and Johor were recruited. The findings showed majority of the respondents (>90%) placed importance on a career that provided “high salary,” “job stability,” and “career’s social standing in the community.” Almost all respondents recognize the medical, pharmacy and nursing profesion compared to only <3% who were familiar with the occupational therapy, audiology and SLT profession. Respondents perceived the SLT profession as “suited for females,” “interesting” and provided “opportunities to meet people.” None of the respondents perceived SLT as a profession that “suited for males,” “high salary” and “a scientic course.” Only 5% of respondents would consider a career in SLT. Findings from this study can be used to increase awareness and to change inaccurate perceptions regarding health science profession especially SLT amongst the Indian ethnicity.
Language Therapy ; Speech Therapy

Introduction: Little is known about the treatment outcomes of children with cleft lip and/or palate (CLP) receiving surgical care for primary lip and palate closure in Malaysia. Objectives: This study examined the speech and hearing status of Malay-speaking children with CLP residing in Kuala Lumpur. Methods: Parents whose children were between the age of 5 and 7 years were recruited via the Cleft Lip and Palate Association of Malaysia (CLAPAM) registry. Parents completed a survey and the children completed a speech and hearing assessment at the Audiology and Speech Sciences Clinic, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Outcomes: Speech measures include nasality rating, nasalance scores, articulation errors and speech intelligibility rating, while hearing measures include hearing thresholds and tympanometry results for each child. Results: Out of 118 registered members who fulfilled the inclusion criteria, 21 agreed to participate in the study. The overall speech and hearing status of children in this sample were poor. Only four (19%) participants had normal speech intelligibility rating and normal hearing bilaterally. In terms of overall cleft management, only four (19%) participants were seen by a cleft team while seven (33%) had never had their hearing tested prior to this study. Conclusion: Participants in this sample had poor outcomes in speech and hearing and received uncoordinated and fragmented cleft care. This finding calls for further large scale research and collaborative efforts into improving and providing centralised, multidisciplinary care for children born with CLP.

Programmes in the Health Sciences are less pursued by students compared to competative programmes such as medicine,pharmacy, and dentistry. This study aimed to investigate the perception of Form Five students towards a career in HealthSciences in four dimensions including characteristics that are considered as “important” in the selection of a careerchoice, the level of knowledge in professions within the field of Health Sciences, students’ perception towards a career inthe field of Health Sciences and their possible career choice in the field of Health Sciences. This is a cross-sectional studythat included 188 students from 10 secondary schools around Kuala Lumpur. The results showed that the respondentsprioritized career characteristics that provided “job satisfaction”(97.8%), “job security” (96.8%), “interesting” (95.2%),“helping other people” (92.4%), “doing something good for society” (92.1%) and “high salary” (88.6%). Respondentsalso reported high level of knowledge for the profession of Medicine (93.1%), Pharmacy (84.0%), Dentistry (76.6%),Nursing (74.8%) and Forensic Science (71.3%). Respondents knew the least about Speech-Language Therapy (28.0%),Audiology (27.0%) and Occupational Therapy (19.3%) professions. Differences in terms of gender and ethnicity were alsoidentified through this study. Respondents’ perception towards the professions were influenced by the level of familiarity,ethnicity and gender. Respondents were found to be less familiar and have misperception towards less-known professions,and this affect respondents’ consideration to pursue these professions as careers.

Peer-assisted learning (PAL) is a potential approach for clinical education that can reduce the burden of clinical supervision and enhance learning. This study aims to identify opportunities for PAL through investigating how speech language therapy students perceive and already participate in PAL within a range of clinical practicum settings. The Speech Sciences students across all years at one institution were invited to participate in a cross-sectional survey that was adapted and revised from Tai et al. (2014). Speech Sciences students reported they applied PAL as part of their learning strategy in their clinical practicums, but still relied on supervisors as the main source of. PAL occurred more frequently in contexts where students already had some clinical experience and spent substantial amounts of time together. Students agreed that PAL enhanced their learning and emphasized a few advantages of PAL, such as having the opportunity to share their ideas, experiences, and knowledge, and providing a positive learning environment without pressure. Confidence to provide information or feedback to peers was cited as a shortcoming in PAL. PAL is a viable teaching approach that can be used in speech-language therapy clinical education program to reduce the supervisory burden. The findings from our study show that PAL is largely self-initiated among speech-language therapy students. However, PAL must be tailored to suit different clinical education year levels and clinical settings to benefit. Case discussion may be one area where scaffolded PAL activities could represent a feasible first step to increasing PAL.

Speech sound disorders adversely affect speech intelligibility. It is important to address speech errors early to reduce the impact on long term communication skills. Parental involvement has been shown to increase the effectiveness of speech therapy because parents were able to carry out speech therapy tasks consistently with their children in the comfort of their own homes. This study aimed to explore the usability of an interactive board game as therapy tool in children with speech sound disorders. In Phase I, market survey and website search regarding existing board games were conducted. In Phase II, board game prototypes using the motor approach for speech intervention were developed. Finally, in Phase III, the usability of the board game was examined. Nineteen respondents comprising eight experienced speech-language therapists and eleven parents of children diagnosed with speech sound disorder participated in the study. Participants used the interactive board game with a child with speech sound disorder for a period of one week and completed a questionnaire. Findings show that majority of the participants (94.7%) were satisfied with the board game as a tool for speech therapy. Additionally, 89.4% of the participants agreed that the board game is fun, and all children choose to play the board game again. Suggestions to improve the board game were documented. Further research is warranted to examine the efficacy of this approach on speech therapy outcomes.