Telepractice troubleshooting guide (McGill & Fiddler, 2021)

Purpose: Telepractice has been used as an alternative service delivery model in speech-language pathology across various settings and the scope of practice. Despite its utility and increasing demands resulting from the COVID-19 global pandemic, some clinicians and clients continue to report apprehension to adopting telepractice service delivery model due to discomfort with technology. Among currently available telepractice platforms, “ZOOM” is one of the popular platforms among speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the United States because of its usability and subscription cost. However, many challenges have been experienced by clinicians and clients when ZOOM is used. The purpose of this article was twofold. The first goal of this article was to address barriers and challenges to implement successful telepractice SLP services. The second goal of this article was to develop four step-by-step troubleshooting manuals (one for client and one for clinician in both English and Spanish) to enhance its utility for users.

Conclusion: Preliminary qualitative data showed that the manuals developed by the authors were useful and functional for graduate SLP students.

Supplemental Material S1. Clinician English ZOOM manual.

Supplemental Material S2. Client English ZOOM manual.

Supplemental Material S3. Spanish manual for clinicians.

Supplemental Material S4. Spanish manual for clients.

McGill, M., & Fiddler, K. (2021). A user's guide for understanding and addressing telepractice technology challenges via ZOOM. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_PERSP-20-00100