This section describes a variety of resources available on ASHA's website to help you plan courses that meet the needs of SLPs and audiologists. It also explains the difference between professional certification and a CE "certificate" program.
In this section:
ASHA's website has a page for speech-language pathologists and audiologists. On each of these webpages, you can find a section called “ASHA Practice Policy.” These sections list the code of ethics, scope of practice, and preferred practice pattern documents.
The image illustrates these categories of policy statements for professional practice from broad to narrow in scope and general to detailed in content, within the context of the ASHA Code of Ethics.
The categories can be define as:
For more information, please read the Preferred Practice Patterns for the Profession of Speech-Language Pathology and Preferred Practice Patterns for the Profession of Audiology.
The CEB has addressed the position statement on auditory integration training and its impact on courses offered for ASHA CEUs.
The Auditory Integration Training Position Statement was adopted by the Legislative Council in 2004. It states that "AIT, a method proposed for treating a variety of auditory and nonauditory disorders, [is] experimental in nature and [has] not yet met scientific standards as a mainstream treatment."
It also states that "well-designed, institutionally approved, research protocols designed to assess the efficacy of AIT are encouraged." The CEB offers the following guidelines to ASHA Approved CE Providers:
On August 6, 2018, the ASHA Board of Directors approved two position statements: one on Facilitated Communication (FC) and another on the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM).
ASHA's position is that Facilitated Communication (FC) should not be used because there is no scientific evidence of its validity, and extensive evidence that the "facilitator" is authoring messages. Furthermore, there is extensive evidence of harms related to the use of FC.
ASHA's position is that Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) is not recommended because of prompt dependency, and the lack of scientific validity. RPM is another facilitator-dependent technique with many similarities to FC.
The CEB offers the following guidelines to ASHA Approved CE Providers:
According to the World Health Organization, interprofessional education (IPE) occurs when two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Read more about ASHA's IPE activities and collaborations here: Interprofessional Education/Interprofessional Practice (IPE/IPP).
According to the National Organization for Competency Assurance "professional certification is the voluntary process by which a non-governmental entity grants a time-limited recognition and use of a credential to an individual after verifying that they have met predetermined and standardized criteria.* ASHA's Certificate of Clinical Competence is a professional certification.
A certificate program is a training program on a specialized topic for which participants receive certification after completing the course and passing an assessment instrument. Note: This is not to be confused with the commonly used "certificate of attendance" given at the completion of many continuing education courses to validate attendance.
Find more information about certification versus certificate programs on our website.
Certificate programs are a growing segment of the continuing education marketplace. As mentioned above, these programs generally recognize a relatively narrow scope of specialized knowledge used in performing duties or tasks required by a certain profession or occupation. Before developing and marketing a training program that offers a certificate or a certification in a particular technique or procedure, answer the following questions:
If you offer a certificate program and register it for ASHA CEUs, all promotional materials should clearly communicate that, although ASHA CEUs may be offered, ASHA does not endorse any course content, specific products, certificate programs, or clinical procedures.
Continuing education events are the primary source where professionals obtain information about current theory, methods, and practice. Therefore, the CEB encourages ASHA Approved CE Providers, course presenters, and planners to infuse current, high-quality evidence into continuing education course content.
In evidence-based continuing education sessions, the presenter
In addition, one must keep in mind that instructors are selected because of their expertise and/or experience in a particular area. Therefore, just as in EBP, presenters of EB CE offerings combine their expertise and experience with the best available, current evidence to guide the presentation. For more information see Recommendations for Infusing Evidence Into Continuing Education Course Content.
ASHA's Practice Portal contains information on clinical topics, professional issues, and other relevant information. The Practice Portal is updated as topics are developed. Another great resource is ASHA Continuing Education’s Intersections, which is a quarterly publication created for ASHA Approved CE Providers. ASHA's community is also a good place to see what SLPs and audiologists are talking about right this minute!
With the latest installment to the ASHA journals online archive, members have free, unlimited online access to more than 60 years of archives, including 675 issues in 169 volumes of:
Yes, if you join a Special Interest Group (SIG), you will have access to Perspectives, exclusive online periodicals for the SIGs that provide a wealth of information on those subjects of most concern to you. By joining one SIG, you gain access to Perspectives for all 20 SIGs —that's 200 new articles annually and more than 2,500 archived articles. Here is a sampling of SIG Perspectives articles
You can read comments and questions from other ASHA CE Administrators through the ASHA Community. Sign in and select My Communities to find CE Providers. The CE Provider Workshop that takes place in conjunction with the ASHA Convention also provides an opportunity for you to network with other CE Providers. Look for further information on the workshop under ASHA CE Communication on the ASHA CE Provider homepage.
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