The Pediatric Eating and Swallowing (PEAS) project was a quality improvement initiative to standardize services and improve care for children with an eating, feeding and swallowing (EFS) disorder in Alberta. Healthcare providers were trained on the new pathway and tools in the summer and autumn of 2020 and began integrating the pathway into EFS services provincially.
The PEAS project is using the AHS Innovation Learning Collaborative methodology for implementation and change management. To evaluate the PEAS clinical pathway, a cohort pre-post pathway implementation study design is being used. The initial implementation period evaluated criteria across the 6 Dimensions of Quality and include, but are not limited to:
|
Quality Dimension |
Expected outcomes |
Target |
|
Acceptability |
% of families who indicate that they are involved as much as they want to be in decisions about their child’s care and treatment |
increase in “Always and Usually” collated % |
|
Accessibility |
% of families who indicate that they have to wait too long to access care |
reduction in % |
|
% of urgent patients that are seen within 2 weeks for assessment |
increase in % | |
|
% of routine patients that are seen within 6 weeks for assessment |
increase in % | |
|
Appropriateness |
% of patient/family that have an EFS Care Plan |
increase in % |
|
Effectiveness |
% of families with reduction in family impact score1 (impact of having a child with feeding problems) |
increase in % of families with reduction in FS-IS total score |
|
Clinic Self-Reported measure based on levels of achievement towards implementing the PEAS clinical pathway |
increase in performance level | |
|
Efficiency |
% of patients seen in an ED quarterly in relation to feeding/swallowing issues (e.g. aspiration, malnutrition, dehydration) |
reduction in % |
|
Safety |
% of patients admitted to hospital quarterly in relation to feeding/swallowing issues (e.g. aspiration, malnutrition, dehydration) |
reduction in % |
1 Lefton-Greif, M. A., Okelo, S. O., Wright, J. M., Collaco, J. M., McGrath-Morrow, S. A., & Eakin, M. N. (2014). Impact of Children’s Feeding/Swallowing Problems: Validation of a New Caregiver Instrument. Dysphagia, 29(6), 671-677. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359894/
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