Forecasting the Future: Expert Opinions on the Next Decade for Adult Speech and Language Disorders

This issue is my last as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Seminars in Speech and Language. I think I have run out of new ideas for engaging and useful topics to help keep clinicians up to date on new developments in the field. However, Heather Wright, who will become the new Co-Editor with the next adult-focus issue of Seminars, is filled with fresh ideas. I am delighted to put this exciting job in her capable hands.

For this last issue, I asked to serve as its issue editor in addition to my overseeing editor's role. This permitted me to indulge in a speculative, but important topic—the future of treatment for adult speech, language, and swallowing disorders. I invited leading thinkers, researchers, and clinicians to forecast their thoughts about how the profession is likely to change over the next 10 or so years and to share their thoughts with you. I chose authors whom I felt really “get” the big picture: from research to clinical practice. Amazingly, in every case the first person I asked thought that it was a fascinating challenge and agreed to participate. I gave them no guidelines, preferring them to have free rein to invite coauthors or not, as they chose, and write in a style that was comfortable to them and to have fun being fortune-tellers for the profession's future. This issue is the result.

The articles vary in length, style, and detail. However, they share some common themes. First, the authors forecast a growing dependency on technology to influence research and clinical practice. They mention technological advances from more efficient record keeping, to the use of virtual reality in treatment, to the development of and use of highly specialized diagnostic and treatment options. The second theme is that it will be necessary to restructure some aspect in the training of speech-language pathologists if we are to take advantage of the scientific and technological steps forward. Finally, there is a growing belief that health care's growing emphasis on patient-centered diagnosis and treatment will become even more central to optimal clinic practice in our discipline. This will also require an educational commitment to supplementing, if not replacing, the top-down medical model that feels implicit in current clinical practice. Well-targeted reservations and some healthy skepticism occur in this issue as well, serving to remind readers that new problems will occur, and new solutions and modifications of old approaches will continue. Readers should find this issue provocative and valuable for all of these reasons. I know I certainly have felt that way as I put the issue together!

The nine individuals I asked to participate in this volume were the following: Julie Barkmeier-Kraemer, Michelle Bourgeois, Michelle Ciucci, Joseph Duffy, Jacqueline Hinckley, Jenny Hoit, Walter Manning, Connie Tompkins, and Lyn Turkstra. They were joined by coauthors Joshua Benditt, Deanna Britton, Jennifer Brush, Natalie Douglas, Katherine Hutcheson, Corinne Jones, Rebecca Khayum, Georgia Malandraki, Rita Patel, Emily Rogalski, and Robert Quesal. I am very grateful to all of these extraordinary, visionary people.

My swan song would be incomplete without mentioning Dr. Daniel Schiff, vice president of Thieme, to whom I have been responsible over the many years of my co-editorship. Dr. Schiff has been patient, extremely helpful, and encouraging and a pleasure to work for. So has Nan Ratner, who taught me the ropes and has become a dear friend. Finally, there is Joycelyn Reid, our Thieme editor. Joycelyn is possibly that easiest person in the world to work with, fixing my (frequent) mistakes with patience and competence. I have never actually met Joycelyn, but I can almost see her cheery face. I certainly feel her goodwill. I will miss you all, and that includes Seminars readers.

Thank you.