My love/hate relationship with continuing education
Continuing education is one of the reasons I love being an SLP. I love to learn new things, and I love that I don’t have a boring job. (I’ve had some boring jobs.)
On the other hand, our field is so vast that it is impossible to know everything that could be useful to our patients. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of new things I could be learning!
Why taking CE courses is so smart
I think we all got into this field because we want to help people. And we all know how important it is to stay current. But we are all super-busy people! And if you didn’t love school, you may not love continuing education courses.
But here’s the great thing about CE courses that people sometimes overlook. A good CE course saves us untold hours of work!
I created and presented a 2-hour CE course in 2024, and I was blown away by how long it took me. (Many, many more hours than I thought it would!)
Just look at the reference list for the last CEU course you took. It’s probably a long list, and it’s probably not even complete!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to do that level of research often. Instead, let me find a great instructor who understands the topic and has done the work to prepare a great seminar!
How I find the time for continuing education
Here’s how I look at it. Learning just one new assessment or treatment method today could change the life of someone I work with tomorrow, but I don’t have to carve out time for a whole CE course in one sitting.
I watch (or just listen to) the videos in 5-15 minute chunks of time, often while doing something else:
- Working out.
- Fixing dinner.
- Washing dishes.
- Driving between patients.
- Taking a walk.
- Doing housework.
Sure, sometimes I have to go back and listen again. But by consuming the video or podcast in small bites, I can finish a course in a super-busy week when there’s no way I could have sat down for an hour or two.
Why I like Medbridge Education
I’ve been taking Medbridge courses since 2017. Here is why I really like Medbridge’s continuing education courses:
- High-quality presenters.
- Wide variety of topics.
- Most courses are video based and behind the paywall.
- The new Speech Scope podcast allows anyone to listen for free.
- The videos provide great visuals.
- Test questions are interspersed throughout the video courses.
- Easy to sign up for a course and download the materials.
- Watch through the website or via the Medbridge app.
- Take the courses at your own pace.
- Complete as many CEUs as you’d like during a year for one low price.
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What you get with the SLP Education subscription
- Access to all CEU courses accredited in your state for SLPs.
- Medbridge certificates.
- Compliance training (with CEUs).
- Live webinars (may offer CEUs).
- Clinician mobile app.
- Courses in soft skills.
- Microlearning courses.
As of December 2024, Medbridge has 1097 SLP courses across pediatrics, school-based, and adult populations.
Topics include aphasia, AAC, autism, cognition, counseling, critical care, dementia, dysphagia, feeding/eating, fluency, language and literacy, motor speech, multicultural issues, neurogenic speech & language, speech, stroke, TBI, telehealth and virtual care, and voice.
What you get with the SLP Premium subscription
- Everything that comes with the SLP Education Subscription.
- Exercise library.
- Patient education library.
- Home exercise builder.
- Medbridge Go mobile app.
- Online patient portal.
- Reporting and analytics.
As of December 2024, the patient education library has 186 videos/handouts specifically for SLPs. The materials cover the range of ages, from paced bottle feeding to dysphagia in dementia. Topics include swallowing, voice, speech, language, and cognitive-communication. They continually add more materials, and you can recommend new materials.
The home exercise builder has 718 exercises for SLPs across pediatrics and adults. With the home exercise builder, you can design home programs for specific patients. You or your patient can then view the exercise program via the Medbridge Go app. You can also save the program as a PDF or print them out. If you use a particular set of exercises across patients, you can save them without a patient’s name attached. I find the exercise builder easy to use.
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