Clinical Spotlight Series - What Swallowing Can Teach Us: Rethinking Competence in Speech-language Therapy

The swallow is never just a swallow. For dysphagia clinicians, mealtimes are where communication and swallowing meet: where someone tells a caregiver what they want to eat, negotiates a texture change, or simply sits at the table and takes part in family life. Now ask yourself this. What if the evidence base we were trained to trust was never built with that whole picture in mind?

 

Disabled adults in Aotearoa are far more likely to go hungry than non-disabled adults, and for Māori and Pacific disabled people, the numbers are stark. The disability measures used around the world to track this don't even ask about eating or swallowing. If dysphagia is invisible in the data, what else is invisible in the tools we use every day, including the ones that decide who counts as competent?

 

Mershen Pillay, a founding member and current secretary of the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) Board. He is also the architect of THRIVE, a four pillar framework spanning food production, food preparation, texture science and community based risk management, takes swallowing as his starting point for a bigger question. What if competence itself needs rethinking from the ground up?

 

This session moves from the dinner table to assessment tools, to evidence, to the frameworks that decide who gets to call themselves a speech-language therapist in Aotearoa. It asks what real accountability to Te Tiriti o Waitangi looks like in practice. Come ready to look at mealtimes, and your own everyday competence, differently.

About our speaker:

Mershen Pillay is Programme Leader for Speech and Language Therapy at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand, and holds an honorary position in the School of Health Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has spent just over three decades working at the intersection of disability, food sovereignty and dysphagia across Aotearoa, South Africa, the Middle East (UAE), and the UK. He is a board member and current secretary of the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI), used in dysphagia management worldwide, and the architect of THRIVE, a four pillar framework working in partnership with Te Ahi Kaa and the Waiuku Family Support Network. He recently co-presented a keynote on decolonisation with Dr Heather Came at NZSTA25 in Napier, and facilitated a workshop bridging global perspectives in speech-language therapy decolonisation.

 

The NZSTA Clinical Spotlight Webinar Series is a professional development initiative that showcases the expertise of speech-language therapists across Aotearoa New Zealand.

 

The series provides an accessible platform for members to share key insights from their research and clinical practice, connect with colleagues, and contribute to our profession’s shared learning. Sessions are typically 45–60 minutes, including time for questions and discussion.

 

The initiative reflects NZSTA’s commitment to creating opportunities for clinicians to learn, connect, and share knowledge, particularly at a time when funding for continuing professional development is limited.