Post by: Nick Hopwood
Tube feeding is becoming more common among children. Increasingly, tube feeding continues after families are discharged from hospital. So, it is important that parents and carers are confident and comfortable in feeding their child in a safe and enjoyable way – at home and in other places where mealtimes would normally happen.
There are important medical and safety aspects of tube feeding. However, the social, inclusive, and developmental aspects of tube feeding are often overlooked in training given to carers.
The SUCCEED Child Feeding Alliance worked with clinicians and parents to develop a Gold Standard for nasogastric (NG) tube feeding. This is based on lived experience, clinical expertise, and confirmed in peer-reviewed literature.
We recognise that regardless of whether a breast, bottle, spoon or tube is used, parents and carers always feed their child with their heart.
The Gold Standard has five main features:
- A mealtime approach: Shifting from tube feeding as a medical procedure to it being just another way of participating in meal times.
- Safety: Hygiene, postural, tube placement, physical and psychological safety for the child
- Responsive: Monitoring for cues from the child that the meal is uncomfortable or tiring
- Family friendly: Fitting in with the routines, cultural values and activities of a wider family that is thriving.
- Developmental: Supporting transitions to oral feeding whenever possible.
The Gold Standard also includes a simple sequence: Ready (everything needed within arm’s reach); Test (checking tube placement); Meal (comfortable and enjoyable); Flush (clean tube with water); Finish (time together while meal settles).
Details of this Gold Standard are published in an open access peer-reviewed article.
Related resources are freely available from https://childfeeding.org/tube-training-course/ where you can also let us know if you are interested to arrange training for clinicians or carers in applying the Gold Standard.
Feeding tubes fill stomachs. Shared meals fill hears.
The SUCCEED Child Feeding Alliance is a registered not for profit whose purpose is to empower families with children who tube feed to thrive.
Author contact Info: Nick Hopwood, Professor School of International Studies and Education, University of Technology Sydney, Co-Director SUCCEED Child Feeding Alliance, nick.hopwood@uts.edu.au
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