Purpose: Speech and language therapists (SLTs) may face challenging situations when making ethical decisions in professional practice. Consequently, it is critical to address ethical concerns in the field of speech and language therapy professional practices, considering current global conditions and the field's development, and to take a position on these issues as a profession. The main aim of this study is to investigate the views of SLTs and SLT students regarding ethical dilemmas they face or are likely to face in professional practice. Another aim was to compare the responses of SLTs and SLT students based on their academic and professional profiles.
Method: A total of 159 individuals, including 75 SLT students and 84 SLTs, participated in the study. The Hypothetical Ethical Dilemmas in Speech and Language Therapy Questionnaire, developed by the authors, was used in the study. The questionnaire consists of 20 items and is based on a 5-point Likert scale (1=not ethical at all). The questionnaire items were created by examining the DKTD-Speech and Language Therapy Professional Ethical Rules Code and ASHA-Hypothetical Ethical Dilemmas Examples. During the development process, it was presented to 6 expert SLTs, and their opinions were obtained (Content Validity Index=1; p<0.05). Kruskal-Wallis H-test was used for comparisons between groups, and the Mann-Whitney-U test with Bonferroni correction was used for measurements with significant differences.
Results: First, when the distribution of the responses to each item was examined, it was observed that the first two situations that were seen as "the most negative" were damaging the reputation of the profession by advertising (x̄=1.26) and damaging the profession’s reputation by belittling (x̄=1.3). The first two situations that were seen as "less negative" in terms of ethics were found to be accepting clients in a field in which they are not experienced enough (x̄=2.99) and teaching professional techniques to various other professional groups (x̄=2.96). The items with the highest consensus in the participants' responses were damaging the reputation of the profession by advertising (SD=0.61) and unfair competition (SD=0.62). Items with high diversity in responses were sharing session images and videos of the client on social media (SD=1.38) and autonomous practice of interns without an SLT supervision (SD=1.36). Significant differences were found among undergraduate students, SLT’s and MSc-PhD candidate groups in the items on protecting professional boundaries (Item 5 [I-5]), sharing session images and videos of the client on social media (I-10), protecting client confidentiality rights (I-11), teaching professional techniques to different professional groups (I-16), and autonomous practice of interns without an SLT supervision (I-17) based on the level of education. Frequently, as the level of education increased, there was an increasing trend in negative opinions (p<0.024). There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of responses to the questionnaire items according to the duration of professional experience (p>0.05) and the institution served (p>0.0125).
Conclusion: The importance of establishing certain compromises on issues such as professional advertisement, cooperation with other disciplines, internship processes, protection of personal data, and the development of standardized approaches in clinical practices has emerged. To ensure consistent practices across the profession, it is recommended that ethical practice issues be discussed on professional association platforms. It is hoped that this preliminary study will serve as a steppingstone for future research.
Keywords
professional ethics, ethical dilemmas, Türkiye, field of speech and language therapy, opinions
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