Regret ever training as a Speech and Language Therapist

[oneanddonemaybe]

I am a SLT and have been working for 9 years. I haven't liked my job for most of this time. Its too long to get in to aaaall the reasons why i don't like my job, if anyone has specific questions I am happy to help. If you go on reddit there are so many people like me but most of them seem to be American. Would love to speak to UK SLT's who feel the same as me.
i don't see myself retraining because it took a lot of effort to graduate. Had a lot of personal stuff going on at the time and also an absolute nightmare final year placement which I had to 're-sit'. I know i am good at my job. But its costing me my mental health and my personal time outside of work. I am also a mum of a 3 year old.
I don't want a paycut and there is no job i could slide into with no further education, which would give me the same salary as I am on now (top of band 6 payscale).

I think i like working in a health related career, but out of all the Allied health professions i could have chosen, i think SLT was the worst decision. I wish i did audiology or radiography. At the same payscale as me, i know for sure there is less admin and less pressure in one of those careers.
I am going to be doing dysphagia training next month, which means about 7 months of studying, coursework and a final exam, but i am willing to put in the work. I have wanted to do dysphagia training for the last 5 years or so but the only way you can do it is if your workplace will allow you the time and give you a supervisor for those 7 months, this is even if you are willing to pay the 1k it costs to do the training, which i was. thankfully my work is paying for this. I really hope i feel a lot happier with a dysphagia caseload. i really think i will. Time will tell!

Would love to hear from any UK SLT's or even students who are regretting their decision. Just so I don't feel like the only one out there!

I work in the NHS (paediatrics). Stress and burnout is common and I’ve known others taking time out, and some who have left the profession altogether.

I second the person who said things have become harder since covid. We have long waiting lists for input (eg 10-11 months). There is an impact to the children, and parents arrive very frustrated at the lack of service.

Other things I find hard;

The stress you absorb from parents/carers- it’s not unusual to see children who have a high level of need (eg significant communication difficulties- non verbal, social interaction difficulties, and subsequent behaviour impacts etc) who have also experienced long waits with other services too. For example autism diagnosis, OT, SEN support- some are declined an EHCP. These parents are really having to fight for support for their children and are often understandably frustrated and feel let down by services and will offload that to you. I find it can feel quite heavy in that respect.

The admin takes more time than the appointments but theres technically no time for it. The complexity of the cases and how many follow up tasks you have beyond the assessment/therapy session. I often end up taking work home - I’m a parent of young children so this is not sustainable for me.

The nature of SLT is needing to document the minutia of communication and I’ve come to the conclusion there is no such thing as a quick set of notes (unless the child has a straightforward speech sound difficulty). If I were to compare case note length to HV, OT, Physio then I would say ours are nearly always longer. Not to say they don’t deal with very complex cases and issues but they seem to be able sum it up in fewer words.

SLT of 20+ years here and if I could leave it in the morning I would be gone (but mortgage, finances, pension etc etc)

I am burned out, figuratively battered and bruised. Massive caseloads (paeds) and never enough time so I inevitably take it home with me which impacts on my time with my own family. I work within the area of learning disability and am often the only service accessible to parents, especially in the early years, so can be in the firing line for parents who are on their own journey of acceptance. And the pressure to 'fix' disabilities and challenges with communication which are life long is immense. I know how strong and experienced I am clinically but my confidence has been shook by parents who assume that because their child hasn't been transformed by a course of therapy that this is because I'm not good enough. It's absolutely exhausting. And that's communication...... Dysphagia is a another matter altogether. Knowing the risk of potential harm keeps me up at night.

If I could tell 18 year old me to swerve it I would

your experience of uni brings back memories! I fought tooth and nail to get the degree- took me almost 6 years instead of 4 because I also failed a placement in my final year, with a nightmare supervisor. Uni handled it very badly. Thats part of the reason i just can't leave the job. all the tears and breakdowns I had to pass, and then it took me almost 2 years to get a job because a) i had such little confidence during interviews. i would stutter and just ramble! b) it was 2012-2014 when there was a lot of competition for jobs. At least in London anyway.

Oh i could have written this! My husband also thinks I give way too much to this job. and I feel the same about leaving the security of the NHS. Successful independant SLT's are also working crazy hours, but atleast they get paid a lot more. One emailed me during her childs xmas play 😁

I think I would feel a lot more pressure as an independant SLT. Being paid for my services makes me feel like i have to do and say 'yes' to so much more. At least atm i still have a sort of understanding manager who will make things easier for me if i tell her I'm taking work home.

You're right. you have to really 'be into it' because it will take up so much of your life. you need to enjoy reading about it and learning in your spare time. I have stacks of unread bulletins that i pay £30 for each month. When I'm home i literally want to live the life of a home maker 😁i want to cook, clean and spend time with family. I don't want to be a career woman. I know myself, and I'll need something really big to happen to force me out of this job. We are hoping to buy our big house in the next 5 years where we plan to stay put in, which will require all our savings. I'm hoping after that, I'll have the courage to leave and try something else, which inevitably will pay less.

can i ask what you do in education? Did you retrain? There are jobs in local councils where teams work with nursery or school settings. Everywhere I've worked have always had some kind of variation of this. Those jobs do seem enticing. you get school holidays off and its more consultative. Theres no pressure of 'therapy' but they are still advising and offering training on all the advice and recommendations we give.

I don't think i could do this either. I'm too negative about the profession to be teaching brand new bushy eyed students about it!

Thats really interseting that you say all SLT's you know that don't like their jobs work with paeds! Maybe its the interactions with parents that beats us down.
I am in the middle of my dysphagia course, and tbh, I'm not sure its right for me either! that might be the stress of the course talking. My supervisor is completely remotely based which is not ideal. i have another SLT who is kind of sharing the supervisor role and she is F2F, but she's come from a special school background to now only seeing under 5's and its a really different kind of role for her, so she's still learning herself tbh. The SLT who would have been my supervisor is on mat leave. If i didnt sign up to the course last year, there was no guarantee i would be able to do it later so i snapped it up. I'm focusing on getting all my log of hours completed and passing my exam. I don't have high hopes for my coursework as I only chose my patient this week, when we were hoping i would have had one by end of jan, but there just didnt seem to be any suitable cases. The course tutor said 25% of case studies are sent back with ammendments to make. I'm expecting that to happen and I'm ok with that.
I'm someone that doesn't give up (even when i probably should) so i will give the dysphagia caseload at least a couple years before i make any decisions about whether its for me or not. i might even try an adult dysphagia post, but as a band 5.

I do think getting dysphagia done will be good. I'd just say that increasing numbers of private SLTs are forming into practices, which makes it less of a scary leap than I used to be. I'd keep an eye on private provision around you and bear it in mind.

I still work for the NHS. I support AHP practice education.

Quality improvement is another route that allows you to continue to work in the NHS.

@oneanddonemaybe I'm dual trained in dysphagia. My long work history has always been adults but I did paediatric dysphagia for about 5 years within a specialist dysphagia post. It's VERY different.

Adult dysphagia is where my heart lies - the medical, differential diagnostics are so engaging. I enjoyed peads but it's very different. I was glad to give it up. The training is completely different for adults than what you're doing now, like totally different.

If you're stagnating in peads, consider a whole change to adults. Acute dysphagia work is very much come in, see some patients and go home and in doesn't impact on your home life.

Ironically I’ve started a uni course in my current field of nursing and I got a first in my first module! Never got those kind of grades doing SLT 😂
You need to read up about ‘sunk costs’. Just because you had challenges to get through the course doesn’t mean you have to do it forever. You will have transferable skills you’ve learned from the degree and working in the field you can take forward to elsewhere. I do think that my SLT experience makes me a better nurse, I learned a lot of communication skills, psychology and counselling skills I didn’t learn through nurse training. Look at your strengths and see where else they fit.

I'd second that generally the adult dysphagia stuff doesn't tend to go home with you like some of the more complex communication work does (although I've got a chap at the moment who is playing on my mind a bit more than the norm), but I bloody hate writing up dysphagia assessment reports compared to communication ones!

I think it's just a case of finding what you enjoy most really - I have colleagues who love the dysphagia element of our workload and colleagues who really don't enjoy it and would prefer communication cases. We can generally play to people's strengths as long as everyone chips in with the more straightforward stuff.

I would say get your dysphagia done and signed off - consider that in the future students are going to be coming out of uni with dysphagia covered a lot more than at present, so you want to make sure you can compete more than anything else - and some roles getting the bloody competencies signed off can be a right pain in the backside - it's been a slog getting mine done working in community and a friend who works in mental health in-patient really hasn't got anywhere with theirs yet.

I definitely love adult work though - just got my band 6 confirmed a few weeks ago - which is not something I ever thought I'd be getting when I was slogging my way through the bits of the course I struggled with and bawling my eyes out in the departmental office.