Undergraduate Nursing Application of the Rapid Aspiration Screening Tool (RAS-3): an Interprofessional Swallow Screen Simulation

Background: Swallow screenings for patients with suspected stroke may increase early identification of aspiration risk potentially reducing the incidence of pneumonia, length of stay, hospital costs, and patient mortality (Benfield et al., 2020; Daniels et al., 2016; Murray et al., 2021; Sherman et al., 2021). A simulation activity including graduate speech-language pathology (SLP) students and nursing students facilitates an experiential learning opportunity that paves the way for future knowledge and professional collaboration.Methods: This study utilized an interdisciplinary swallow screen (Rapid Aspiration Screening [RAS-3]) lab, which included a standardized training protocol and simulation activity using standardized patients. The archival dataset included assessment data of 72 students from two programs, an accelerated undergraduate nursing (RN) program and SLP program within the same university.Results: RN and SLP students obtained similar swallow screen interpretation results (e.g., x(2) [1, 97] = 0.01, p = .92). Overall competency scores increased from pretraining (Mean = 82.4, N = 72) to posttraining (Mean = 96.5, N = 71). Twenty-six RN students and 23 SLP students (Mean difference = 19.2 and 25.2, respectively) scored higher after the RAS-3 training (Mean rank = 30.1). A significant difference in pretraining competency scores between RN students (Mean rank = 43.6, N = 48) and SLP students (Mean rank = 22.4, N = 24) (U = 236.5, z = -4.16, p < .00) was also observed, with a moderate effect size (r = -0.49). Furthermore, using the RAS-3 Lab Follow-up Questionnaire, 75.9% indicated they strongly felt that standardized patients helped them prepare for clinical practice.Conclusion: By providing a structured training program and then supporting the didactic material with an experiential, interdisciplinary activity, RN students were able to achieve results comparable to SLP students when performing the RAS3 swallow screen (Table 4).