Managing ongoing swallow safety through information-sharing: An ethnography of speech and language therapists and nurses at work on stroke units

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: This study provides new understanding for patient safety dilemmas associated with the enactment and oversight of swallowing recommendations in context, on stroke wards. Findings can support SLTs and nurses to explore together how information for ongoing dysphagia management can be safely implemented within ward realities and kept up to date. This could include considering nursing capacity to act when SLTs are not there, mealtime staffing and SLT 7-day working. Together they can review their understanding of risk and preferred local and formal routes for learning from it.WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject It is known that information to keep swallowing safe is shared through swallowing recommendations, which are understood to involve a balance of risks between optimizing the safety of the swallow mechanism and maintaining physiological and emotional health. There is increasing appreciation from patient safety research, of the importance of understanding the context in which hospital staff make decisions about risk and patient safety. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The paper provides new empirical understanding for the complexities of risk management associated with SLT and nursing interactions and roles with respect to ongoing swallow safety. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Findings can underpin SLT and nurse discussion about how swallow safety could be improved in their own se...
Source: International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Source Type: research