Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, offers a Medical Speech-Language Pathology Postdoctoral Fellowship of either one or two years length, depending on your needs, clinical interests and progress in the program.

This fellowship offers an excellent opportunity for doctoral-level speech and language pathologists to refine their clinical skills and address important clinical questions in a way that strengthens an academic teaching, patient care or clinical research career.

Mayo Clinic in Rochester has longstanding excellence in clinical practice, teaching and research in the area of speech pathology. This fellowship was developed for individuals who have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. degree in speech-language pathology and want to further advance their knowledge and skills in the area of medical speech pathology.

Mission

The mission of the Medical Speech-Language Pathology program is to train postdoctoral fellows to establish competency in independent practice in the diagnosis and treatment of individuals across the scope of neurologic communication disorders; develop a proficiency in the differential diagnosis of acquired speech, language, and cognitive impairments; apply the principles of scientific study as they relate to the provision of service; and demonstrate knowledge and skills in both intra and interprofessional collaboration across a variety of medical settings. 

The Mayo Clinic mission is stated as follows.

• Inspiring hope and promoting health through integrated clinical practice, education and research.

The program’s mission reflects the broader mission of Mayo Clinic with an emphasis of promoting hope and health through integrated practice, education, and research in the domains of neurological systems and pathology, as they relate to communication (i.e. speech-language-cognition).

The Medical Speech-Language Pathology program is in a position to meet the training mission in light of the following program features.

• The Division of Speech Pathology provides a unique work environment embedded within the Department of Neurology. To our knowledge such an environment does not exist in any other medical facility in the country.
• The majority of patients encountered in the practice have a known neurological diagnosis, suspicion for an underlying neurological diagnosis, or a need to clarify communication/cognitive symptomatology to guide diagnosis.
• Upon receiving a unifying diagnosis for their symptoms, patients with a neurological diagnosis will benefit from treatment and management.
  • Suggestions to optimize speech.
  • Methods for enhancing language abilities.
  • Strategies for managing cognitive impairment.
• The Program encompasses service delivery across a scope of patient care, from acute care to outpatient practice.

During the program, you receive:

• A focused clinical experience that facilitates development of expertise in differential diagnosis of a wide variety of communication disorders
• Training that develops your abilities to evaluate, describe, diagnose and formulate management recommendations for speech and language disorders in adults and children, with an emphasis on neurologic speech and language disorders
• Experience that hones your skills in communicating evaluation results and recommendations to physicians and other health care professionals, as well as patients and their significant others
• Clinical working knowledge of a wide variety of medical conditions, particularly those that frequently cause speech, voice, language and other communication disorders

Certification

Fellows who begin the program without a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association can complete the requirements for that certification during the first year of this fellowship.

Program history

The Medical Speech-Language Pathology Postdoctoral Fellowship at Mayo Clinic's campus in Minnesota began in 1963. Since that time, nearly 50 fellows have completed their training in this program. We anticipate that one fellow will complete this program annually.

An examination of outcome data over the past twenty years reveals that individuals who complete the fellowship program move into productive careers in Clinical, Academic, Research, or some combination of these professional vocations across a range of settings nationally and internationally. 

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