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Commentary on "Making Evidence-Based Decisions About Child Language Intervention in Schools" by Gillam and Gillam

Contact author: Marc E. Fey, KUMC, Department of hearing and Speech, 3901 Rainbow Boulevard, Kansas City, KS 66160-7605. E-mail: mfey{at}kumc.edu

PURPOSE: This paper is a personal reaction to Gillam and Gillam's treatise on evidence-based decision making in schools. This evaluation focuses principally on the costs and benefits of clinicians' search for external evidence, potential problems associated with efforts to grade that evidence, and the integration of this evidence with "internal" evidence related to specific children and their families, clinician preferences and experience, and the school setting.

METHOD: Descriptive methods (that are not evidence-based) are used to evaluate critically Gillam and Gillam's proposals on the implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) in schools.

CONCLUSION: Early efforts to implement the plan for EBP illustrated by Gillam and Gillam are likely to be difficult, forcing clinicians to be flexible and patient. Nevertheless, if the plan is followed, it will result ultimately in improved speech-language pathology services in the schools and improved clinical research to support those services.

KEY WORDS: evidence-based practice, efficiency, effectiveness, speech-language intervention

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