ASHA's Clinical and Technical Requirements

ASHA reserves the right to edit, revise, or reject any advertising for any reason at any time without liability, even though previously acknowledged or accepted.

Clinical Requirement for Recruitment Advertisements

• ASHA standards specify that speech-language pathologists and audiologists supervising or providing clinical services must hold the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) for the area in which they are providing or supervising professional services.
• Ads for clinical positions must indicate the appropriate certification.
• Ads for hearing aid dispensers must indicate ASHA's certification requirement (CCC-A or CF-A).
• The Clinical Fellowship (CF) is the postgraduate period of professional experience required for ASHA certification once the academic course work and clinical practicum have been completed. A CF must be supervised by a person who holds the appropriate CCC. The minimum entry level for the profession is a master's degree.
• Avoid the terms teacher and teaching when referring to the positions or services of speech-language pathologists and audiologists.
• The term specialist may not be used except in the areas of fluency and child/language.

Certification Status

The following abbreviations signify certification status:

• CCC-SLP holds CCC in Speech-Language Pathology
• CCC-A holds CCC in Audiology
• CF-SLP eligible to begin CF in Speech-Language Pathology
• CF-A eligible to begin CF in Audiology
  

Approved Terminology

• Speech-language pathologists should not be referred to as therapists, speech therapists, or speech pathologists.
• Speech-language pathologist (pathology) should be written as such, not as "speech/language pathologist" or "speech language pathologist" without the hyphen.
• To avoid repetition in ad copy, the term clinician may be used when referring to a speech-language pathologist or audiologist.
• Note: Programs—not departments, schools, or hospitals—can hold CPSA or CAA accreditation.
• ASHA endorses equal employment opportunity practices and accepts only ads that are not discriminatory on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, age, national origin, sexual orientation, or physical handicap.
• First-person language should be used to identify individuals with disorders (i.e. people who stutter, instead of stutterers).

• ASHA practice professionals review all ads for efficacy claims and use of person-first language. Advertisers making efficacy claims will be asked to provide research data to substantiate the claim.