Advanced FEES Training Course

The Advanced FEES Training Course provides Speech-Language Pathologists with prior knowledge, training, and experience in endoscopic assessment of oropharyngeal swallowing to opportunity to improve observation, analysis, and interpretation skills using actual FEES study recording, and to write concise, informational reports.  This course is kept small–no more than 12 participants–allowing for questions, discussions, debates, and learning.  The exercises devised for this course are intended to challenge even the most experienced clinician.  Participants are not asked to bring favorite or challenging cases. This FEES training course is not intended as a review of old or new clinical research, even though discussion and some exercise decisions may defer to such research for guidance. A scoring scheme will be introduced and practice throughout this training and very useful in the real clinical setting.  The thrust of scoring each individual swallow trial is to identify severity of inefficient and unsafe swallowing behaviors and to determine if a consistent pattern of such behaviors occurs.

The objectives of this advance FEES training are:

To learn to systematically observe & score individual & unique behaviors associated with normal or abnormal oropharyngeal swallowing events as captured using an endoscopic swallow procedure;
To analyze the significance of endoscopically-observed behaviors during an abnormal oropharyngeal swallowing event;
To determine underlying biomechanical/sensory causes of abnormal oropharyngeal swallowing behaviors, which
potentially determine directions for intervention and remediation;
To relate observed abnormal swallowing behaviors & their biomechanical/sensory causes to underlying primary medical conditions; and
To write a concise & clear report incorporating endoscopic observations of normal & abnormal swallowing events,
their significance & underlying causes relative to the primary medical diagnoses, & possible intervention approaches.

The Faculty is highly experienced and knowledgeable based upon years of providing clinical services to persons with dysphagia and teaching other Speech-Language Pathologists to use FEES in their clinical settings.

This Advanced FEES Training course meets for two consecutive days (usually over a weekend) for 14 hours total.  It is approved for 1.4 continuing education units by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and SASS is an accredited ASHA CE Provider.