Educating a Nursing Home
We kicked off Swallowing Awareness week on Monday with a trip to a local Nursing Home educate staff about dysphagia and the change to IDDSI. Staff have received training through different formats around the change to IDDSI, but we took the opportunity to reinforce the importance of adhering to the recommendations. We had around 25 staff attending over the course of the afternoon, ranging from therapy staff to chefs and carers.
The first station raised awareness around different red flags to look for when working with patients. Within the nursing home, we typically carry out bedside assessments due to ease of having the patient's in the setting and using what is available. We showed videos of videofluoroscopy assessments which peaked the interest of lots of people and gave them further inside into alternative methods of assessment to support our recommendations.
The second station gave staff the opportunity to have a go at thickening drinks and trying thickened shots of different juices to see which they preferred. The general feedback from people seemed to be that they didn't think thickened fresh juice was as bad as they had originally expected. However, thickened water seemed to be more of a problem for people. They felt the it was the texture rather than the taste.
The final station challenged people to make a 'level 6 - soft and bite sized' piece out of playdoh for the correct size. The variations of the responses were quite surprising. Some care staff had difficulty understanding the change to IDDSI and were still working off the old descriptors. Some produced sizes of around 5cm but extremely thin, whereas others were more over cautious, with sizes of around 0.3cm.
Hopefully this learning opportunity will support staff caring for patients on a daily basis to empathise with what the person is going through, and be able to provide a higher quality of care as they are able to relate to the experience. This has also hopefully raised awareness of red flags and signs to look for in order to make a referral to Speech and Language Therapy. A positive day all round and a good method of delivering more informal training.
We kicked off Swallowing Awareness week on Monday with a trip to a local Nursing Home educate staff about dysphagia and the change to IDDSI. Staff have received training through different formats around the change to IDDSI, but we took the opportunity to reinforce the importance of adhering to the recommendations. We had around 25 staff attending over the course of the afternoon, ranging from therapy staff to chefs and carers.
The first station raised awareness around different red flags to look for when working with patients. Within the nursing home, we typically carry out bedside assessments due to ease of having the patient's in the setting and using what is available. We showed videos of videofluoroscopy assessments which peaked the interest of lots of people and gave them further inside into alternative methods of assessment to support our recommendations.
The second station gave staff the opportunity to have a go at thickening drinks and trying thickened shots of different juices to see which they preferred. The general feedback from people seemed to be that they didn't think thickened fresh juice was as bad as they had originally expected. However, thickened water seemed to be more of a problem for people. They felt the it was the texture rather than the taste.
The final station challenged people to make a 'level 6 - soft and bite sized' piece out of playdoh for the correct size. The variations of the responses were quite surprising. Some care staff had difficulty understanding the change to IDDSI and were still working off the old descriptors. Some produced sizes of around 5cm but extremely thin, whereas others were more over cautious, with sizes of around 0.3cm.
Hopefully this learning opportunity will support staff caring for patients on a daily basis to empathise with what the person is going through, and be able to provide a higher quality of care as they are able to relate to the experience. This has also hopefully raised awareness of red flags and signs to look for in order to make a referral to Speech and Language Therapy. A positive day all round and a good method of delivering more informal training.
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