Dysphagia Care Plan, Education, and Best Practices for Your Staff, 2nd Edition

Goals & Objectives:

Course Overview

Staff education on feeding, thickening liquids, strategies, and precautions is part of our job as speech pathologists or occupational therapists. If we don’t provide this information, the lack of staff education and knowledge may result in choking, aspiration events, or worse. Studies document staff education is often nonexistent or very general. This seminar will identify specific recommendations and rationale for their use. These strategies are critical for staff and families to follow during meals. If there’s a lack of understanding or follow-through, the patient can be at risk. The resource handout provides useful information to construct patient-specific care plans for use in your facility, outpatient, or home health settings to maintain adequate nutrition and hydration and improve patient safety with oral intake.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completing this course, the learner should be able to:

• Identify three factors that negatively impact a resident’s nutrition and hydration
• Recognize the importance of adding an individualized mouthcare protocol to a resident’s care plan
• Recognize the mealtime problems interfering with a resident’s oral intake
• Recognize characteristics of a patient’s IDDSI diet level to prevent diet errors
• Recall the testing method to verify correct liquid consistency
• Recall the impact of foods used to administer crushed medications