Interpreting meets speech-language pathology: students' perception of an IPE session

Interprofessional education (IPE) has an added value in interpreting training since it improves the collaboration between different professional groups, by constructing common ground and raising awareness of the needs, role boundaries and interactional goals of both professions. Although the value of IPE is acknowledged in interpreting studies, there is little documentation of its practical implementation and assessment in interpreting education. The implementation of IPE sessions is, indeed, arduous since it requires more commitment, coordination and personal contacts. This paper aims to contribute to the documentation of existing interventions in our disciplines involving interprofessional collaboration by describing an IPE session between interpreting and speech-language pathology (SLP) students and its assessment by means of a focus group and a post-task questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire and the answers given by the students during the focus group show that they recognise the value of IPE. The IPE session showed them how the other professionals acted and thought, and taught them how to collaborate and interact with them more successfully during an interpreter-mediated SLP or diagnostic session.