How do people with swallowing difficulties decide what to eat and drink?

Sally Pratten at Leeds Beckett University would like to hear from people with diagnosed dysphagia (swallowing difficulty) to better understand your experience of this and how this effects your decisions about food and drink.

This will involve giving your personal story and/or completing a short questionnaire on a project website. Completing both parts is expected to take around 30mins.

What is the study about?

Many adults experience swallowing difficulties following a stroke and other conditions. These difficulties can have a serious impact on health and wellbeing.

This research aims to understand how people experience swallowing difficulties and how they decide what to eat and drink.

This will help healthcare professionals to better understand the experiences of those living with swallowing difficulties, including those who have had a stroke.

It will also help inform conversations about eating and drinking decisions when swallowing difficulties are present.

What will it Involve?

We would like to know more about your experiences of swallowing difficulties and how this effects the decisions you make about what to eat and drink.

You can take part in one or both of the following activities, both available on our project website:

You can complete these in your own time until 31 October 2022. Completing both parts is expected to take around 30 minutes.

Who can take part?

Any adult with swallowing difficulties can share their experience.

To complete the questionnaire, we ask that participants have been told they have dysphagia (diagnosed swallowing difficulty) by a healthcare professional.

Anyone who has not been told by a healthcare professional that they have a diagnosis of dysphagia are asked not to complete the questionnaire, but are welcome to submit their experience/story.

Hi I was prescribed as nil by mouth for many weeks after the stroke and tubed in hospital, but as time passed and the perseverance of one particular nurse I regained my swallowing . Started with tea spoons of water and then moved up to apple purée, then a scanner was used to check my swallowing habits were normal and straight back to normal food with a lot more chewing time and slower swallowing