Rhonda L. Shively, OT-RL

Feeding, Eating & Swallowing Occupational Therapist

Ms. Rhonda L. Shively is a Feeding, Eating & Swallowing Occupational Therapist in Twin Falls, ID with special training and skill in holistically evaluating and resolving eating and swallowing dysfunctions by addressing environmental, cultural, physiological, and psychosocial interventions. As a Feeding, Eating & Swallowing Occupational Therapist, Rhonda L. Shively, OT-RL performs holistic care in neonatal intensive care units, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation hospitals, mental health facilities, nursing facilities, and hospices. Feeding, Eating & Swallowing Occupational Therapy is comprehensive management of feeding, eating, and swallowing challenges. Significant diseases and conditions treated by Feeding, Eating & Swallowing Occupational Therapists include difficulty raising food to the mouth, aspiration, dementia, and psychologically based eating disorders. Medical tests, procedures and therapies provided by Feeding, Eating & Swallowing Occupational Therapists include videofluoroscopy, ultrasonography, electromyography, swallowing technique education, behavior modification program, environmental modification, providing adaptive equipment, and neuromuscular electrical stimulation.

Occupational therapists provide interventions to clients of all ages with feeding, eating and swallowing difficulties. Occupational therapists provide comprehensive rehabilitative, habilitative, and palliative dysphagia care, which includes collaborating with clients to provide individualized compensatory swallowing strategies, modified diet textures, adapted mealtime environments, enhanced feeding skills, preparatory exercises and positioning to clients, reinforcement of mealtime strategies to enhance and improve swallowing skills, and training to caregivers to enhance eating and feeding performance. Occupational therapists provide screening and in-depth clinical assessment which may include instrumental dysphagia assessments including videofluroscopy.