Evaluation of an Interdisciplinary Decision Guide for Infant Feeding Assessment

University of North Carolina (UNC)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Feeding and Eating Disorders of Childhood; Premature Birth

Treatments: Behavioral: Decision Support Tool

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04850794

20-2786

Details and patient eligibility

About

Preterm infants are at risk for feeding problems which can persist through early childhood. These feeding problems may include oral motor, sensory, digestive, nutritional, respiratory, and/or behavioral components. In North Carolina's early intervention program, speech pathologists or occupational therapists are responsible for completing feeding evaluations, and may not know when to refer infants out to medical specialists to address these other domains. This study will test a decision support tool in hypothetical feeding evaluation scenarios. The hypothetical scenarios will consist of real feeding videos of preterm infants who recently participated in a multidisciplinary feeding evaluation. Parent-reported outcomes of the infant's real evaluation will be compared to those of the speech pathologists and occupational therapists in our study who do, and do not, use the decision support tool. The investigators hypothesize that therapists with the tool will make recommendations that are closer to those of the multidisciplinary team, and that they will find the tool useful and easy to use.

Due to recruitment limitations with families, the study was adapted in October, 2021 prior to enrollment of subjects to use case studies, rather than infant videos, as the hypothetical situation from which to test the tool. Therapists will then answer clinical questions without using the tool when viewing the first case study, and will use the tool to answer questions when viewing the second case study. Order of case study presentation will be randomized among participants.

Enrollment: 56 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• at least 18 years of age,
• speech language pathologist or occupational therapist,
• at least 2 years of experience evaluating and treating pediatric feeding,
• have worked in early intervention in last 5 years,
• English proficiency,
• currently reside in North Carolina

Exclusion criteria

• <2 years of experience in pediatric feeding,
• have not worked in Early Intervention in last 5 years,
• younger than 18 years old

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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56 participants in 2 patient groups

Case A then Case B

Experimental group

Description:

Participant will first review and answer questions about Case A without using the tool. Then, they will use the tool to answer questions about case B.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Decision Support Tool

Case B then Case A

Experimental group

Description:

Participant will first review and answer questions about Case B without using the tool. Then, they will use the tool to answer questions about case A.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Decision Support Tool