Perspectives of speech-language pathologists with expertise in aphasia regarding the content of clinical practice guidelines to support end-of-life decision-making by persons with Aphasia

The research study aimed to develop evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for communication strategies to support end-of-life decision-making by persons with aphasia (PWA). An exploratory sequential mixed method design, guided by the framework of evidence-based practice, was implemented. The expertise of clinical and academic SLPs working in the field of aphasia represents one of the three sources of evidence within the framework of EBP that was gathered in the development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. This code book comprises the coding of the information gathered from two focus group studies held with academic and clinical speech-language pathologists (SLPs) with expertise in aphasia. The SLPs were asked to describe any complex (including end-of-life) decisions that they have researched or supported PWA to make; barriers and facilitators to the process; and the communication strategies that support end-of-life decision-making by PWA. A qualitative descriptive research design was followed in gaining this information and the data gathered was subjected to qualitative content analysis.