Hannah Douglass, MS, CCC-SLP is a Ph.D. student in the Rehabilitation Sciences program at UK. She began at UK in the Communication Sciences and Disorders master's program. There, she participated in the Linking Kids to Speech Pathologists personnel preparation grant to receive training in telepractice delivery. This program is one of the only existing college-level training available for SLPs in the US. During this time, she also completed a thesis project which examined the state of training guidelines for telehealth patient presenters and created a set of competencies for training patient presenters assisting with speech therapy in the school setting. Prior to this study, no standardized guidelines existed for presenters in this setting, despite the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association stating that adequately trained presenters are the responsibility of the SLP.

Currently, she is working to extend the findings from her thesis project by investigating the current roles and responsibilities of school-based patient presenters using a mixed-methods approach, including surveys and interviews. Our preliminary results suggest schools may not be following guidelines for best practices by forgoing a dedicated patient presenter. Additionally, she is working on a meta-synthesis of qualitative literature regarding the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of clinicians (PT/OT/SLP) providing telehealth services. Clinician acceptance has been identified as a critical factor in sustainable telehealth programs. Yet, research syntheses on this topic are lacking, making it challenging to determine the variables that influence clinician acceptance. She has also given presentations about increasing client candidacy for telehealth services by using the built-in accessibility features found in standard devices. These features are free adaptations that clinicians can make, enabling many more people to access the services they need.