An international perspective on quality of life in aphasia: A survey of clinician views and practices from sixteen countries

Objective: To gain an insight into speech and language therapists’ perspectives and practices on quality of life in aphasia.
Participants and Methods: The International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics Aphasia Committee developed a survey questionnaire, which was delivered on-line, anonymously, through SurveyMonkey (November 2012 – April 2013) to clinicians working with people with aphasia in 16 countries across the world.
Results: A large number of speech and language therapists responded to the survey, with 19/21 questions answered by 385 – 579 participants. Clinicians were well informed on what constitutes quality of life and viewed it as a complex construct influenced by health, participation, in/dependence, communication, personal factors, and environmental factors. In their clinical practice, they considered quality of life as important, used informal approaches to explore it and aimed to address quality of life goals; yet the majority did not evaluate quality of life in a systematic way.
Conclusion: There is a need for training on quality of life to facilitate speech and language therapists to incorporate quality of life outcome measures in their interventions. There is also a need for further research on what interventions improve quality of life in aphasia.