Vocal Health in SLPs: Easier Said Than Done.

Objectives: As professional voice users, speech and language pathologists (SLPs) follow vocal hygiene behaviors both in the rehabilitation of voice disorders and in preventive interventions to reduce the risk among healthy users. However, it is curious to what extent SLPs adhere to vocal hygiene and healthy vocal behaviors and how this affects vocal fatigue. This study aims to investigate the extent to which SLPs perform vocal hygiene behaviors, their levels of vocal hygiene, and vocal fatigue.

Method: An online survey with 22 questions was developed to assess participants' healthy vocal behavior. In addition, the Voice Fatigue Index was employed to determine participants' levels of vocal fatigue. These two data collection tools were sent online to intern speech and language therapy students and professionals in Türkiye. Including student and professional SLPs, a total of 120 individuals partook in the study. The data were analyzed through SPSS 23.0. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, ANOVA, pearson correlation, and Tukey post hoc test.

Results: Almost half of the participants (40.8%) stated they were careful about vocal health. No significant difference was concluded between the student and professional SLPs in terms of compliance with the vocal hygiene behaviors. Vocal Fatigue Index scores of both groups were high, but significantly high for the professionals (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: SLPs, an intern or not, seem to find it difficult to fully practice what they preach, leading to concerning fatigue levels. SLPs should regulate their living conditions to comply more with appropriate vocal hygiene behaviors.