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HI, I am considering purchasing your Traditional menus & spread sheets on disk. Do you think these menus would be appropriate for a facility with both long term care and acute care patients? Is the accompaning Diet Manual appropriate as well?
I am sure you will find our menus appropriate for both the settings. Here in Ohio we have them in place in the same facility settings you mentioned, and they are well received by clients. Regional differences specific to your state, and certainly for your specific population, may need to be implemented and the disk will allow you to do that. The menu and recipe book are well organized and user friendly. Our diet manual is one of our best selling publications and is a good choice to accompany your menu purchase. I would also suggest another popular manual, "It's Tough to Swallow", for your dysphagic clients needing texture modifications such as the National Dysphagia Diet, pureed, and thickened liquids. It has over 80 recipes designed for dysphagia diets.
 
I have been working in a residential and intermediate care facility for MRDD for the last 10 months. I am a new member of the Dietitians in Developmental and Psychiatric Disorders DPG. It seems from the listserv that many of my colleagues are new to this field, as am I. Can you create some products for us? I think assessment is the main issue, as often it appears that figuring out calorie needs is difficult for this population. There are lots of texture and consistency issues also, and consumer education is hard if they are moderately and severly MR.
We have a number of publications that may be helpful to you: Our diet manual, Menus and Recipes for MRDD group homes, It's Tough to Swallow: Nutrition and Dining for Dysphagia, our soon to be released Forms book (will have assessment forms included for MRDD), our diet instructions may also be of help to the staff in deciphering diets, and our inservices for staff education.
 
Do you offer a simple educational tool that can be used to teach foodservice supervisors the basics of modified diets? I have two that just didn't learn it in their schooling (not CDMs) who desperately need the basics. Hard copy or on line would be fine.
We have a few items that might be helpful. One is our Inservice called “Understanding Special Diets.” It’s pretty simplified and geared more to the dietary workers. This comes on CD-ROM only: http://beckydorner.com/publications-details.html?id=23 We also have our Simplified Diet Manual that would cover all the basic diets: http://www.beckydorner.com/publications-details.html?id=30 I hope that one of these will prove helpful! Good luck!