LSHSS Clinical Forum Treatment Decisions for Children With Speech–Sound Disorders

I have a vivid memory of a brief conversation I hadseveral years ago with one of the elders of theprofession in a hallway at a conference about the latest buzzword that was beginning to infiltrate the profession. This individual scoffed at what he viewed as the latest attempt to get our profession to use research to justify and support treatment practices. He had been in the profession for more than 40 years and had seen repeated attempts tomake clinical practicemore research based and was not optimistic that this latest attempt would be any more successful than previous ones. What was once a buzzword was the theme of our 2005 national convention in San Diego. The buzzword is, of course, evidence-based practice. The term is so familiar these days that most simply refer to it as EBP. Like my older colleague, I was initially skeptical about what EBP had to offer our profession, but once I began reading the literature on EBP, I came to see that EBP was much more than simply using research to guide clinical practice