The Clinical Skills Roadmap for Speech-Language Pathologists

Carolyn Baylor is a speech-language pathologist with a career that encompasses clinical practice, research, and teaching.

Clinical Experience: Carolyn’s clinical work has focused on adult medical settings, including acute care, inpatient rehabilitation, and outpatient rehabilitation. Her primary interests lie in otolaryngology/head and neck surgery, serving adults with voice injuries, head and neck cancer, and related swallowing and communication impairments. She also has extensive experience working with adults with neurologic diagnoses.

Academic and Research Pursuits: Driven by a desire to contribute to teaching and research, and to address limitations she observed in clinical practice regarding holistic, patient-centered approaches, Carolyn pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Washington. Her doctoral training provided her with expertise in biopsychosocial models of care, qualitative research, and the development of patient-reported outcomes, equipping her for a career focused on participation-based intervention. She advocates for a broad understanding of participation-based intervention, integrating both traditional skill-based methods and psychosocial approaches, with a strong emphasis on the communication environment.

Teaching Positions: At the University of Washington, Carolyn has held positions as Co-Director of the Ph.D. Program in Rehabilitation Science and has served as Vice Chair of Academic Programs. Her teaching responsibilities have included developing and instructing Ph.D. seminar courses, an interprofessional education course for rehabilitation students, and an undergraduate introductory course on rehabilitation professions.

She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington, where she teaches graduate courses in clinical methods, voice disorders and intervention, and research methods, as well as undergraduate courses on clinical methods and acquired communication disorders. Carolyn values the unique contributions of each trainee and enjoys supporting their career development.

Research Focus: Carolyn’s research centers on using qualitative methods to explore the lived experiences of adults with communication disabilities. She aims to develop tools that promote patient-centered, participation-based clinical interventions, including patient-reported outcome measures and specific intervention approaches. She has been instrumental in developing the Communicative Participation Item Bank (CPIB) and its variations, the Communication Support Questionnaire (CSQ), and the Levels of Speech Usage scale. Additionally, she co-developed a Participation-Based Intervention Framework and the FRAME model for accessible patient-provider communication. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Speech-Language Hearing Foundation, and the University of Washington. She highly values collaborative relationships with colleagues locally, nationally, and internationally, across speech-language pathology and other professions.

Recognition and Affiliations: Carolyn has received recognition for her work, including three Editor’s Awards from the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, the Erskine Fellowship from the University of Canterbury, and the Kathryn M. Yorkston Award for Mentorship from the University of Washington. She is a member of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences, and the Washington State Speech Language and Hearing Association.

Personal Interests: In her personal time, Carolyn enjoys sightseeing, hiking, reading, baking, road trips, and spending time with her husband and son.

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