Tins of thickener have been used to prepare thickened fluids for those with dysphagia (swallowing disorders) for years because it’s thought to be cost effective – BUT as
so much of it is wasted or thrown away; because it is very difficult use and takes so much time to mix into drinks; it is far more expensive than you have ever thought.
In the next 60 seconds I will show you an astonishingly simple way you can prepare thickened fluids for those in your care, but before I do, please consider these points.
- Look at the amount of thickener, cold drink juices, tea, coffee and milk you use. It’s difficult to make a drink at the right consistency first time and so you will have to make a few drinks until you get it right. How many times have you thrown a cold juice drinks, tea, coffee and milk a way and started again from scratch?
Of course this assumes you can use the thickener? If a spoon has been left in it or the lid off – it sometimes doesn’t work as well as it should. So you throw it away and get a fresh one. More waste, more cost.
- Then look at how long it actually takes you to make a drink.
It can take up to 10 minutes to make a thickened drink from start to finish. Find
a cup, collect the thickener, scoop measure. Measure the amount of water, measure the right amount of thickener. Carefully add the thickener to the drink, stir with a fork etc. etc. If you make six drinks a day for only 1 person that’s an hour a day; a massive 7 hours a week stood about mixing a drink.
- Then remember this in his research paper Inadequate Fluid Intakes in Acute Stroke Patients Mr K Whelan discovered, because thickened drinks take so long to prepare, patients with dysphagia are typically offered 50% less to drink than those who take ordinary fluids and are therefore more likely to be dehydrated.
And here is where the real costs start for those in your care.
Forget the financial cost of waste and time for the moment– consider the discomfort those in your care could suffer from if they don’t have enough
to drink caused by dehydration.
It isn’t just the complications of being dehydrated; urinary infections, low blood pressure, skin infections, constipation, poor oral health, dizziness and confusion, it’s the procedures they have to go through to overcome it.
Depending on the severity of their condition they will have to be hydrated by increasing invasive and uncomfortable procedures such as; IV’s (fluids through a needle in your arm), NG’s (a tube pushed up your nose and down the back of your throat and into your stomach) or PEG (a feeding tube which passes through the abdominal wall directly into the stomach, so that nutrition can be provided via a valve directly into your stomach).
Avoid all these financial and human costs
Now I ask you, even if you could overcome only some of these problems using a pre-prepared drink would you do it?
Adding thickening agent to drinks is old fashioned, inefficient, unreliable. In the future all thickened fluids
will be provided ready to use, to dramatically reduce the financial and human costs that can be associated with
its use.
That future is being enjoyed right now across the country in hospitals, by professionals in the community and families caring for loved ones at home that are using Slõ drinks.
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