Cost: $369.00/person
CEU Credits Offered: 1.15

About the Event:

Learn tools and strategies to guide your clinical decision-making process for assessment and treatment of a child with complex feeding issues. Managing pediatric dysphagia can be challenging as practices evolve, new protocols are implemented, and multiple developmental as well as anatomical factors can impact an infant or child’s ability to eat or drink safely and efficiently. By identifying, assessing, and treating the multiple factors causing or contributing to pediatric dysphagia, BRIDGE provides a multifaceted assessment and treatment approach that provides therapists the tools to think critically when working through difficult cases. The BRIDGE Approach taught in this course provides attendees with information from embryology through childhood and focuses on how the neurological, anatomical, as well as physiological components of growth and development impact pediatric feeding and swallowing. Evaluation to treatment, is presented through the collaborative lens of a speech-language pathologist and an occupational therapist.  Different perspectives will be discussed from the pediatric swallowing mechanism from an anatomical and physiological perspective including both instrumental and clinical assessment methods by the SLP to the postural, sensory, and behavioral components to feeding and swallowing including considerations for adaptive interventions when applicable.   Attendees will be given strategies to implement immediately when working with children with dysphagia as well as discuss questions, cases, and concerns with the presenters. By BRIDGEing the gap between the multifaceted components of pediatric dysphagia, attendees will gain effective tools to implement when managing pediatric feeding and swallowing disorders.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the embryological, neurological, anatomical, physiological, and developmental factors as it relates to pediatric feeding and swallowing.

• Apply the foundational skills necessary to assess and treat pediatric dysphagia by applying intervention strategies and implementing appropriate treatment techniques during interactive case studies.

• Choose an appropriate and evidence-based tool to use when working with infants, toddlers, and children with pediatric feeding and swallowing disorders.

• Distinguish between the benefits and limitations in current best practices including positioning, thickening, treatment of dysphagia, and both clinical as well as instrumental assessment.

• Determine when and why to apply strategies when managing pediatric dysphagia based on presenting impairment and response to intervention.

Audience:

This course is designed for OTs, SLPs and PTs who work with children with complex feeding disorders.