Medical Speech-Language Pathology in Bulgaria – a Comparative Study of the Current Status and Development

Abstract

During the last decade, some Bulgarian universities[1] have begun to educate students within the specialty of Logopedics in the professional area of Public Health. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, all Bulgarian hospitals have restructured their activities, including the divisions of Otolaryngology (ENT) and Neurology. Speech and language services provided in healthcare settings have been developed and evaluated with regard to both safety and effectiveness (Castillo-Allendes et al., 2020; Pak-Hin Kong, 2021), but in Bulgaria, there is no officially accepted document that defines the scope of practice in Logopedics[2], including medical rehabilitative settings. This represents a serious obstacle to the creation of an organized and effective master’s degree program in Clinical Logopedics (CL). There is no doubt that such a program must support high-quality clinical practice for voice, aphasia, dysphagia, dysarthria, and neurocognitive disorders, all of which are commonly encountered communication disorders (CDs) in medical rehabilitative settings.