To provide a link between the code of ethics and clinical practice, Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) provides ethics education to members, enabling them to identify ethical issues or dilemmas and provide direction on how these might be managed in a clinical situation. This presentation explores a group of SPA members’ perceptions of participating in a comprehensive ethics learning program. The session aims to provide an overview of the research, focusing on the outcomes of qualitative findings. The research aims to identify characteristics of SPA members who accessed the learning program and factors that prompted them to access it. It aims to determine participant views and experiences of engaging with the program, as well as perceived impact on their professional practice.
Three interrelated themes were developed from the data, all of which reflect on the priority of ethics in relation to the overall speech pathology role – time, career stage and professional learning. These findings highlight the complexity of perceptions across the participant group – while all participants highly valued ethics education and viewed themselves as ethical professionals, they consistently experienced difficulty prioritising ethical learning when other factors relating to their role competed for priority.
Further questions emerged from the analysis, namely, how can ethics be on ongoing professional development priority, how to increase the value of ethics in an already full caseload, and what career stage is optimal for initial ethics learning.
Findings indicate that it is necessary to continue to improve the conditions that make ethical learning possible. While ethics education and learning are likely to improve ethical decision-making and practice, they are often considered secondary to other caseload management and learning priorities. As a result, speech pathologists are less likely to engage with ethics education unless it provides concrete benefits to their clinical practice.

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Kenny, B., Serry, T., Scarinci, N., & Johnson, T. (2023). Ethics Education for Speech-Language Pathologists: An Evolving and Essential Aspect of Clinical and Professional Practice. Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology, 25(2), 60–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/22087168.2023.12370393