Cultivating Nurture to Nourishment: NICU to Home – Assessment and Intervention

This course is the follow up to Cultivating Nurture and Nourishment: From NICU to Home – Setting the Stage.

Often the NICU is where miracles take place, and it provides a space for stability, restoration and healing. However, it is also a traumatic start for both the infant and their families. Nourishment is a term which means “to foster the development of, to provide food or sustenance necessary for growth and life” while nurture means “the action of raising or caring for offspring”. So often, the families of neonates who require hospitalization are not given the chance to experience this, or their experience providing one or both of these things is severely limited. These limited experiences create difficult circumstances around the transition to home, including a focus on the quantity of the feedings their children receive as opposed to the quality of the development of skill and the bond they can share.
Supporting infant and pediatric feeding is a post-graduate, advanced skill set whether in the acute, outpatient, or home health settings. It requires a high level of professionalism, interprofessional collaboration, communication, and clinical reasoning skills, which come with intentional continuing education and mentorship.
This course will provide a solid foundation of the development of normal feeding skills in the neonate, how to identify abnormal development, and what therapeutic interventions can be considered for treatment. Evidence-based research and approaches will be shared and demonstrated, and resources such as articles to consider, books to read, and encouragement for mentorship will be provided.

Following this course, participants will be able to:

1. List at least 3 different tools available for assessing a neonate or their families for feeding difficulties.
2. Describe 2 instrumental swallow assessments utilized in the neonatal population and when each may be appropriate.
3. Discuss 3 therapeutic feeding intervention strategies to trial during an assessment or treatment session.

This course meets the requirement for Professional Development hours towards your ASHA renewal since it is approved by TSHA! You can count these hours towards ASHA renewal when you submit your Compliance Form.