The Aphasia Implementation Toolkit Project: Developing an implementation intervention to improve services for stroke survivors with aphasia

Aphasia is a language and communication disability that affects over a third of stroke survivors. Aphasia clinicians need implementation support to provide evidence-based care that meets the needs of people with aphasia and their families.

Aphasia is an acquired language impairment that affects over a third of stroke survivors. Speech pathologists face numerous barriers in providing vital services, including a lack of confidence and skills in changing practice, as well as organisational barriers and resource constraints. These barriers can result in inadequate and ineffective aphasia services. Preliminary research has found that aphasia services can improve when clinicians are provided with targeted implementation support, resources, and strategies. For example, clinicians are motivated to change practice after hearing from people with lived experience discuss the consequences of missing out on evidence-based care. Therefore, including the ‘lived experience’ voice is an example of a powerful motivator that can drive practice change.

People with lived experience of aphasia and clinical speech pathologists have identified their priorities for service provision in order to receive the best care possible. This project will work with people with lived experience of aphasia and clinicians to co-design, develop and test an implementation toolkit so that clinical services can provide care in line with best practice. 

Project details

There are evidence-practice gaps in aphasia care, and speech pathologists face challenges in changing practices to close these gaps. This project aims to improve aphasia services through developing an implementation toolkit that can be tailored to services to meet their needs. The Aphasia Implementation Toolkit will be developed as a fit-for-purpose, multi-component implementation intervention to support the provision of best practice in aphasia services.

This project will take forward priorities identified by people with lived experience of aphasia and clinicians. This project will incorporate principles of behaviour change theory and co-production to develop much-needed implementation support to address the national priorities for aphasia. Overall, the project seeks to improves outcomes for speech pathologists and for people living with aphasia.

The specific aims of this research project are to:  

1. Use co-production methods to work in partnership with people with lived experience of aphasia, speech pathology clinicians and researchers, and implementation scientists, to co-produce an implementation toolkit,
2. Determine the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness of the developed toolkit, and  
3. Explore how (and if) the intervention works in the health service setting and to understand factors impacting outcomes.