Feeding Challenges in Infants, Toddlers and Beyond: Learn Critical Thinking Skills to Safely Manage
Presenter(s)
Dana Kizer, MS, OTR/L, BCP and Anais Villaluna, MS, CCC-SLP, BCS-S, CLC
Live webinar for therapists. Complete all four sessions for 11.5 Contact hours (1.15 CEUs) | September 14 and 15, 2024 | 9:40 am EST • 8:40 am CST • 7:40 am MST • 6:40 am PST (US)
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.