Survey of Specialists’ Awareness of Rehabilitation Team Working in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences toward Augmentative and Alternative Communication Methods

The ability to communicate through speech is one of the unique abilities of human beings. People who have lost their ability to speak for any reason cannot communicate effectively. The Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) methods have been proposed as a suitable solution to help these people. The aim of the present study was to investigate the level of awareness of the rehabilitation team at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences with regard to Augmentative and Alternative Communication services.

In the current cross-sectional study, the awareness of 31 specialists of rehabilitation team working in hospitals and rehabilitation centers of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences was studied using a researcher-made questionnaire. The content validity of the questionnaire was 76.31.To describe the data, SPSS software (version 22) was used.

The results showed that 38.7 percent of respondents did not have any kind of familiarity with Augmentative and Alternative Communication or had little familiarity with these services. Only 6.4% of respondents had so muchfamiliarity with this term. The participants were most familiar with a simple communication system, including paper and pencil (80.6%).

According to the results, the specialists had limited familiarity with Augmentative And Alternative Communication services and the target community of these services; Therefore, these specialists need to be trained in this field, both theoretically and in practice.