Tips for Teaching Graduate Students About Dysphagia

“When I was in graduate school, we didn’t even have a class on dysphagia,” I sometimes tell my students. But before you hold this against me, I did realize this gap in my education during my clinical fellowship back in 1993, so I attended a course taught by Jeri Logemann. The course helped me connect the dots, but I did my fellowship in an outpatient department for a children’s hospital, so I needed to learn quickly. Fortunately, Joan Arvedson, Bob Beecher and Monica Wojcik continued to shape my pediatric dysphagia knowledge. Now I’m a clinical instructor and guest lecturer teaching a pediatric dysphagia course to speech-language pathology graduate students. Hearkening back to my experiences 25 years ago, I get more excited each year about ways to engage and prepare students. I am thrilled to educate budding professionals on how to best serve clients and families with often complex feeding and swallowing issues. Here are some resources and insights I use to engage my students and teach them problem-solving skills: Dysphagia awareness. On Sept. 27, 2008, Congress passed a bipartisan resolution designating the month of June (coming right up!) as National Dysphagia Awareness Month. You can use this as a motivation to provide hands-on learning labs throughout your university clinic. Cover issues including altering liquid viscosity, assessing nipple flow and testing swallowing tools, such as expiratory muscle strength training and mesh bag feeders. In addition, holding a...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Academia & Research Health Care Slider Speech-Language Pathology Dysphagia Feeding Disorders NICU Swallowing Disorders Source Type: blogs