- Introduction
The institution co-responsible for the Project, the Faculty of Health Studies (FHS) of the University of Pardubice (UPa), will participate in the project through two of its clinics: The Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery Clinic and the Neurology Clinic, which are located on the grounds of the Pardubice Regional Hospital. The co-investigator and his colleagues will participate in the development of the diagnostic and therapeutic standards for dysphagia (?the dysphagia standard?) within their profession and subsequently, these standards will be integrated into a united diagnostic and therapeutic algorithm and will be applied to practice (Mandysová, Ehler, Škvrňáková, otorhinolaryngologist, speech therapist). In the 1st and 2nd year of the research project, workers of the FHS will be responsible mainly for implementing a nursing dysphagia screening method, Brief Bedside Dysphagia Screening (BBDS) * into practice (Mandysova et al., 2011). The BBDS method was developed in the workplace of this co-investigator during research that preceded this project. In year 1, the method will be implemented in the workplace of the principle investigator (at the workplace of the co-investigator, the method will have been used since 2011) and as of year 1, the method will be implemented in nursing study programmes at the FHS at the bachelor and master levels (Mandysová, Škvrňáková). At the same time, user-friendliness of this method will be studied, as well as its intra-rater and inter-rater reliability. Between year 1 and 4 of the project, the BBDS method will be used to evaluate swallowing function of patients with cerebrovascular accident (in the post-acute phase, which is characterized by improving functional status of the patient, and in the chronic phase, during which the patient's functional status remains the same). Using the patients' acute hospitalization data, obtained from their medical records, their swallowing function in the acute phase of their illness will be compared to data about their current swallowing abilities, as obtained through the BBDS. The aim is to describe the evolution of their swallowing function as they progress from the acute to the post-acute and chronic phase of their illness. Next, the aim is to identify the average amount of time needed to examine one patient using the BBDS, which enables to judge the tool's practicality (Mandysová, Škvrňáková, nurse).
