An International Perspective on Quality of Life in Aphasia: A Survey of Clinician Views and Practices from Sixteen Countries

Katerina Hilari, Anu Klippi, Fofi Constantinidou, Simon Horton, Claire Penn, Anastasia Raymer, Sarah Wallace, Nada Zemva, Linda Worrall

To gain an insight into speech and language therapists' perspectives on and practices in quality of life in aphasia. The International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics Aphasia Committee developed a survey questionnaire, which was delivered online, anonymously, through SurveyMonkey (November 2012 to April 2013) to clinicians working with people with aphasia in 16 countries across the world. 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. There is a need for training on quality of life to help speech and language therapists incorporate quality of life outcome measures in their interventions. There is also a need for further research on which interventions improve quality of life in aphasia.