RE: Re: Oral Assessment - please help?

May 10, 2011

Hi

Thanks so much for your email – great

advice and references!!

All noted and I’m sure it’s

going to help me in many future oral assessments!

(and I’m Google searching to find Alison

Hazelbaker’s USLCA webinar…)

Warmly

Yulanda Ridge, IBCLC in South Africa

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of Cole

Sent: 07 May 2011 06:47 AM

To:

Subject: Re: Oral

Assessment - please help?

I am at a

conference and my reply time is limited but I wanted to chime in. Someone

asked about how to get experience with oral assessments. Doing oral assessments

is so critical to our work and yet doesn’t happen often enough in my

opinion. Just sticking a finger in baby’s mouth to “see if the suck

is good” does not count as an oral exam!

As for learning to

do oral assessments, experience and seeing lots of babies is a good place to

start. I did see that the new Breastfeeding Management for the Clinician by

Marsha has a nice chapter on doing an oral assessment. Other resources

to utilize: Start getting familiar with Alison Hazelbaker’s lingual

frenulum assessment tool (watch her last USLCA webinar) and use it (not only w/

tongue tied babies). Read Supporting Sucking Skills by Genna.

Attend lots of conferences. Read about anatomy to understand what is connected

to what and how muscle, bone, nerves, etc all connect and impact each other.

Mostly, start examining lots of babies mouths to get a sense of normal vs.

dysfunctional, (ask the baby’s and parents permission of course and talk

them through what you are doing and seeing and have fun…most babies

happily enjoy some mouth “games” and you’ll learn a lot too).

Cole

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