A common disadvantage of becoming a speech therapist is the extensive education needed to enter the field. Here are 10 challenges for the pediatric speech-language pathology profession that SLPs persevere because of their dedication to helping others. This is great IF your school's caseload is manageable. If your caseload is too high, you're being very productive.
However, if there is an excursion, a meeting, and a designated time for the team at a school, you don't need to leave. You can use that time to bill, process documents, or contact your colleagues about students. IEP meetings, screenings, domains, evaluations, reevaluations, data collection, paperwork in schools are long and tedious. There are a lot of bureaucratic procedures, boxes to check and specific formats to use.
All speech-language pathologists receive the same education and training at the university, but SLPs employed by the public sector are often forced to defend their professional judgment simply because they work for the public sector. In fact, the rate of exhaustion among speech pathologists is increasing significantly thanks to many factors that are completely out of their hands. The reality is that there are differences between the educational model and the medical model of speech therapy and each model has its own advantages and disadvantages. A speech pathologist from schools will be part of a school-level team, the student's personal IEP team, the special education team, and the team from the speech pathology department.
Some public schools will hire people with a bachelor's degree level to provide speech and language services, even if they don't meet the master's degree requirements to be speech-language pathologists. Because of a lack of funding, many federal and state agencies (public schools and early intervention providers) sometimes have unqualified individuals who provide “speech services.”.
