1.1 Client-Centered Service
Effective September 2015; Revised June 2022
Standard
A regulated member of ACSLPA uses a client–centered approach in the provision of competent and safe professional services.
Indicators
To demonstrate this standard, the regulated member will:
a) Involve clients in decision making and incorporate their needs and goals into the service plan. This includes collaboration with clients to gain an understanding of how/if their language/culture/context impacts service provision.
b) Utilize a variety of communication strategies to facilitate, and make efforts to confirm, the clients’ understanding of professional services.
c) Obtain clients’ informed consent to proposed assessment and intervention plans, recognizing the right to refuse service or withdraw consent at any time.
d) Monitor clients’ responses to assessment, intervention procedures and address as appropriate.
e) Treat all clients with compassion, dignity, sensitivity, and respect. Make efforts to avoid actions that diminish, demean, or disempower the identity and well-being of the client, family, or caregivers.
Expected Outcomes
Clients can expect that the regulated member considers their unique values and needs, explains proposed assessment and intervention procedures and obtains informed consent.
Glossary
Assessment refers to “the rehabilitation process for gathering in-depth information to identify the individual’s strengths and needs related to body function, body structure, activity and participation, to understand the individual’s goals and then to determine appropriate services and interventions based on these. It is initiated when there are questions about a client’s needs and how best to meet these needs. It includes both formal and informal measures ranging from administering standardized assessment tools to observing a client in a specific setting or listening to family concerns.”
Client refers to “a recipient of speech-language pathology or audiology services, and may be an individual, family, group, community or population. An individual client may also be referred to as a patient.”
Collaboration refers to “an approach that enables health care providers to deliver high quality, safe, person-centered services to achieve the best possible individual health outcomes. Collaborative practice is not the goal in and of itself: rather, it is a means to move the system to a higher level of quality and safety while maintaining a focus on the needs of the individual seeking health services.”
Competence/competent/competency refers to “the combined knowledge, skills, attitudes and judgment required to provide professional services.”
Informed consent refers to when “a client gives consent to receive a proposed service following a process of decision-making leading to an informed choice. Valid consent may be either verbal or written unless otherwise required by institutional or provincial/territorial regulation. The client is provided with sufficient information, including the benefits and risks, and the possible alternatives to the proposed service, and the client understands this information. The client can withdraw informed consent at any time.”
Intervention/intervention strategy refers to “an activity or set of activities aimed at modifying a process, course of action or sequence of events in order to change one or several of their characteristics, such as performance or expected outcome.” In speech-language pathology and audiology, intervention is a term used to describe the various services provided to clients, including but not limited to individual and group treatment, counselling, home programming, caregiver training, devices, discharge planning, etc.”
Professional services refer to “any service that comes within the practice of a regulated profession; for the professions of speech-language pathology and audiology, these are as outlined in section 3 of Schedule 28 of the Health Professions Act.”
Regulated member refers to “an individual who is registered with ACSLPA in any of the regulated categories of membership prescribed by ACSLPA Bylaws, the Health Professions Act and our Regulations.”