SLPSystematic ReviewDysphagia2025

Assessment of Dysphagia Management Competence among Healthcare Providers: A Scoping Review.

R Jordan Hazelwood, Garnet F Robinson, George W Wolford and 1 others

PMID 40437232

WHAT IT FOUND

No standardized protocol exists for assessing dysphagia management competence in healthcare providers.

Existing tools vary widely in focus and scoring, often relying on self-reports or narrow skill checks without validated reliability, leaving a gap in consistent professional training evaluation.

Key findings

01No standardized protocol was identified for assessing dysphagia competence across healthcare providers.

02Existing assessment protocols vary widely, with many relying on self-assessment or lacking clear standardization criteria.

03There is no evidence for the validity and reliability of the competence assessment methods currently used in the literature.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

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What it does not show

The search was restricted to English-language publications. The quality of individual included records was not appraised. The review assumed that competence is being actively assessed in clinical practice, which may bias the search toward existing, potentially non-representative metrics. Internal metrics used within training facilities that are not published in peer-reviewed literature were not captured. The search was conducted in February 2023, so more recent data were not included.

Declared interests

Funded by Appalachian State University. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

The easy way to misread this

Do not interpret the variety of existing assessment tools as evidence that competence can be reliably measured. The review explicitly states that no standardized protocol exists and that there is no evidence for the validity and reliability of the current methods.

Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →