H(OT) 5: Self-Feeding

Transcript

Director of Occupational Therapy Services  Jen Ruoff, MS, OTR/L: Hi, my name is Jennifer Ruoff. I am the Director of Occupational Therapy Clinical Services at FOX Rehabilitation.

Ruoff: I’m here today with my fellow team guru Rachel Read who is also our Director of our electronic health records system.

Electronic Health Record Clinical Director  Rachel Read, MS, OTR/L, CAPS: Thanks for having me today.

Ruoff: Yeah, it’s a pleasure to have you.

Ruoff: So we wanted to talk today about the top five tricks related to self-feeding and what we would give, and possibly, or adapt for an older adult in their home.

Ruoff: So first thing we would recommend is contrast. You can see here, I have this beautiful bright orange tablecloth very pleasing to the eye. It’s very easy to see. This allows our patients with possible visual impairments or perceptual issues to be able to see everything that they have to utilize on a daily basis.

Ruoff: The next adaptation that we have is different plates and bowls that can be adapted for someone with, possibly, difficulty with fine motor coordination, maybe has possible tremors.

Ruoff: So you can see here, I have a bunch of different ones I have a high-scoop bowl and a high-scoop plate.

Ruoff: Now, if you don’t want to spend the money or your patient can’t afford to spend $10 or $15 to get these adaptations, go the dollar store.

Ruoff: Here’s a plastic plate with a plastic high-scoop adaptation. Just thrown right on there.

Ruoff: Now I’m going to pass it to Rachel, and she’s going to talk about some other ones.

Read: Thank you. So a couple of other things that we have are adaptive utensils.

Read: So the first one is a weighted spoon. And so this allows people who have tremors or have very poor stability in their arm the ability to have something that’s a little weighted on the end so that they could scoop it.

Read: And, it can reduce any tremors, reduce any spillage, and they could bring it to their mouth, and not end up with a mess on their lap.

Read: Another one is an angled spoon. So, anybody who has a limited range of motion in their arm, they would be able to not have to worry about having that deviation to get the food from their yogurt into their mouth. They don’t have to have that extra movement and they can just scoop it and bring it right in.

Ruoff: That’s a great one.

Read: Thanks. And then lastly, again a very… very easy adaptation that you could use — cheap is really what I mean is that cheap adaptation is if you get some tubing, some rubber tubing and you can cut it. You can get a lot for a little bit of money. And then, you could just take any of their silverware and add it into here, and then you have something that builds up the spoon or the utensil, the fork. And, they can hold it without having to have that tight grip on it which is really great for anybody who is arthritic.

Read: Next, a lot of times our patients have a really difficult time opening up items. And so, a very cheap solution is some Theraband, and it just gives a little bit of some traction to the cap so that they can open it up. So they don’t have to worry about trying to find one of those fancy… I don’t know. What you call it?

Ruoff: Some Dycem.

Read: Or you know you can get those fancy rubber grip ones. Or, you can just cut off a little Theraband for them and it makes it a lot easier for them. And then, the last one is looking for, especially you know, mugs. A lot of our older adults like to have mugs. And, some of them can be weighted very heavily or have very thin handles.

Read: And so what I would recommend is getting one that’s very light and also one that has a thick handle, so that, again for your arthritic patients with limited range of motion, pain in their hand, they don’t have to really hold on to it too tight with a very thin handle. The thicker the handle, the better for them.

Ruoff: Very foxy.

Read: Yes.

Ruoff: Well, thank you guys for joining us today to talk about the top five tips and tricks related to self-feeding.