What is the Clinical Fellowship Skills Inventory?

The CFSI is the rating instrument your CF supervisor uses to evaluate your clinical skills. It is completed at the close of each of the three CF segments, not once at the end of the fellowship.

What score do I need on the CFSI?

Under ASHA's 2027 standards, the Clinical Fellow must score a 2 or 3 on all skills on the inventory. Confirm the current scoring requirement against asha.org, since this changed between standards revisions.

What if my mentor never observed a skill on the CFSI?

Your supervisor cannot rate a skill they did not observe. If your caseload gave no opportunity to demonstrate a skill during a segment, that is a gap in that segment — raise it with your supervisor while there are still weeks left to arrange the exposure.

The CFSI: what it is, and why it's due three times

Segments & the CFSI · August 24, 2026

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Most Clinical Fellows learn about the Clinical Fellowship Skills Inventory late, and usually as a form to sign at the end. That framing causes real problems, because the CFSI is not an end-of-year document. It closes every segment.

What the CFSI is

The CFSI is the instrument your CF supervisor uses to rate your clinical skills across a defined set of competencies. It is the mechanism by which your supervisor's judgment becomes part of your certification record — the hours log says you were there, and the CFSI says you were competent.

The part that catches people out

ASHA's requirement is that every skill on the inventory must be observed and evaluated during each segment of the CF experience. Not once over the fellowship. Once per segment, three times total.

This has a consequence that is easy to miss until it's too late: your supervisor cannot evaluate a skill they never watched you perform. If segment one was entirely inpatient dysphagia and the inventory includes skills you had no occasion to demonstrate, that is a gap in segment one — and it does not get fixed by demonstrating the skill in segment two.

What to do about it

Read the inventory in week one, not week eleven. You cannot plan caseload exposure around a document you haven't read.

Map the inventory against your actual caseload early in each segment. Where a skill has no natural opportunity in your setting, that is a conversation to have with your supervisor while there are still weeks left to arrange one — a shared session, a different referral, a shift on another service.

Treat each segment as a fresh start. Segments are evaluated independently. Strong performance in segment one buys nothing in segment two.

How this interacts with the rest of the requirements

The segment structure governs more than the CFSI. Your supervisor owes a fresh 6 hours of direct care observation and 6 hours of indirect mentorship in every segment, and at least 3 of those direct hours must be in person. A segment where your supervisor is behind on observation hours is usually also a segment where the CFSI is thin — the two problems have the same cause.

The segment planner will show you where your segment boundaries fall in real dates, and the supervision checker will tell you whether a given segment's supervisor hours currently meet the minimum.

Your CFSI scores reach ASHA through your supervisor's online verification, not a submitted form — see the CF Report and Rating Form for how that actually works.

Requirements change. Confirm the current inventory and its requirements against ASHA's Clinical Fellowship guide before relying on anything here.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Clinical Fellowship Skills Inventory?: The CFSI is the rating instrument your CF supervisor uses to evaluate your clinical skills. It is completed at the close of each of the three CF segments, not once at the end of the fellowship.
How many times is the CFSI completed?: Three times — once at the close of each segment. Every skill on the inventory must be observed and evaluated within each segment individually.
What score do I need on the CFSI?: Under ASHA's 2027 standards, the Clinical Fellow must score a 2 or 3 on all skills on the inventory. Confirm the current scoring requirement against asha.org, since this changed between standards revisions.
What if my mentor never observed a skill on the CFSI?: Your supervisor cannot rate a skill they did not observe. If your caseload gave no opportunity to demonstrate a skill during a segment, that is a gap in that segment — raise it with your supervisor while there are still weeks left to arrange the exposure.