Promoting Counseling Skills in Audiology Clinical Supervisors: Considerations for Professional Development

Purpose: Clinical supervision for counseling skill development can be variable and can undermine student ability to learn patient-centered care communication. The current study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of consultation and feedback sessions on counseling behavior, in actual clinical practice, among clinical audiology supervisors. We also collected qualitative data on participants' experiences and suggestions for improving the counseling intervention to increase counseling communication in audiology graduate training programs. Method: We used a noncurrent multiple baseline design and staggered the counseling intervention to control for effects of concurrent events and passage of time. Results: Two participants showed small but reliable increases in counseling behavior, whereas the 3rd participant showed bigger but less stable increases in counseling. Participants reported that brief feedback sessions were helpful; however, they also mentioned barriers to counseling, such as worries with how much time counseling could take when they have back-to-back appointments. Conclusion: Clinical audiology supervisors were able to improve their counseling skills in real-life sessions with regular feedback. More structure may be needed to strengthen future counseling skills.