After many years of serving in various capacities on the OSHA Board, I now find myself writing the President’s message. It feels like I just stepped into this role, and its already half over. I’m just starting to feel my stride. I hope to impart some valuable insight into what OSHA is planning and hoping to accomplish throughout the year and beyond. My theme for the year is focused on ADVOCACY. Advocating at all levels, for the profession on a global scale, advocating for your clients, advocating for services and also advocating for yourself as a professional. I know each and every one of us does very important work each day that makes a difference in the lives of clients we serve as well as the other professionals that work with us. However, sometimes we don’t always let others know what skills and knowledge we bring to the conversation, and we don’t bring the professionalism that we should. We need to let others know of the education we have, the experience we have, and the specialized knowledge that we’ve gained.

When appropriate, share about what an SLP does—what is your scope of practice, what is your education? Talk about your scope of practice, you don’t just teach someone how to say /r/. You do much more than that.

Talk about your education and training as an Audiologist. What is your scope of practice and how do you work in collaboration with other professionals? Explain the vast differences between your training versus that of a hearing aid dealer.

Ultimately I believe the consumers that we serve will be the advocates we will partner with to demand that our services be covered by insurance, that make the general public aware of what we do as professionals to change the lives of our clients.

We are facing some big obstacles.  The median age of a practicing SLP today is 45 years- meaning we’ll expect a large exodus from the profession in retirements in the coming years.  We need to acknowledge the Ph.D. shortages, the increase of baby boomer population which will bring a demand for services to more elderly clients, and the fabulous medical advances that allow babies to survive today who wouldn’t have even five years ago.

I am asking each of you to advocate in even small ways. Let’s help recognize and elevate our professions. Here are some ideas—
- make a presentation to the staff
- speak on a specialized subject at a multidisciplinary staffing
- review your scope when you start services with a new client,
-review your scope and specialized skills at IEP meetings, explain to parents and educators WHY you are working on specific goals and how attaining those goals relate to other goals areas as well as future skills that student will need lifelong.

As President, one of the projects I’m spearheading is developing some advocacy materials such as succinct handouts to clients and related professionals and PowerPoint presentations that can be downloaded and used for presentations to administration, staff meetings, parents, team meetings etc. If you’re interested in working on this project, please contact me: anortham@chemeketa.edu

I challenge you to talk about your profession, your education and training, and what skills you will add to the team. Just do it!

“We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
Hegel