Health Professionals’ Identification Levels of Risk Factors: In View of The Management of In-Patients Admitted with Upper Gastrointestinal Tract Swallowing Disorders in a Kenyan National Hospital

Adequate dysphagia awareness among health professionals is vital to facilitate collaborative dysphagia management. However, there are concerns that in many countries, many health professionals have low or moderate dysphagia awareness. In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, we assessed the identification levels on risk factors of oropharyngeal dysphagia among health professionals attending to adult inpatients in the acute-care facility of a level-six hospital in Kenya. The sample comprised 16 professionals from six specialties: neurologists, oncologists, nurses, nutritionists, physiotherapists, and speech-language therapists. We measured their risk factor identification levels using a previously validated nine-item questionnaire. Frequencies, percentages, and means were used to identify key patterns in participants’ risk factor identification levels, while the independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to establish cross-sectional differences in identification levels based on selected demographic and general characteristics. The mean risk factor identification score was 73.6% (SD = 17.14). There were significant differences in identification scores due to age (F = 4.67, p = .030), educational attainment (F = 5.94, p = .015), experience (F = 5.34, p = .020), and specialization (F = 5.06, p = .024). Mean comparisons showed that identification levels increased with educational attainment and were highest among participants in the category comprising oncologists, nutritionists, and speech therapists. From the findings, we concluded that health professionals in the facility have, on average, moderate OPD risk factor awareness and that increased educational attainment may enhance OPD awareness.