Indications: an unconscious patient (for example, a patient on artificial lung ventilation); swallowing disorders; lack of appetite due to illness (eg, cancer, sepsis, HIV); obstruction of the upper respiratory tract or esophagus; psychological problems (such as anorexia); psychiatric problems (such as severe dementia).

Contraindications – shock, non-functioning digestive tract; bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract; acute abdominal clinical picture, etc.

Purpose of the procedure: the student knows how to feed the patient through a nasogastric tube using the bolus method.

The bolus method can provide:
1. With the gravity method - a syringe (50 - 100ml) without a piston is added to the lumen of the probe. The feeding mixture is poured into the syringe and the rate of introduction is adjusted by raising the syringe higher or lowering the syringe lower.

2. With a syringe - the feeding mixture is drawn into the syringe and injected into the stomach with the help of a plunger.
3. With a feeding pump – the required dose is administered with the help of an enteral feeding system and a pump.

Using the bolus method, up to 300 ml of feeding solution can be administered at one time, over a period of 5-20 minutes. The introduction is repeated at regular intervals (up to 6 times a day).

Ongoing, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data to support the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice in relation to products or technologies, including those adapted or specially designed to assist functioning. 

Supporting and assisting the person to identify and/or to access appropriate services, resources and supports, including linking the person with service agencies and providing interpretation and translation services. 

Evaluating services, systems and policies in relation to effects on health. 

Providing advice about services, systems and policies, in relation to health (or risks).

Promoting messages to raise awareness about services, systems and policies.

Evaluating behavioural patterns concerning a person’s day-to-day way of life.

Evaluating the ability to create and maintain relationship with others in informal settings (e.g. friends, neighbours, acquaintances, co-inhabitants and peers) in a contextually and socially appropriate manner.

Providing information to improve knowledge about carrying out the tasks and actions required of engaging in work preparation, acquiring, keeping and terminating a job and engaging in remunerative and non-remunerative employment.

Evaluating the ability to carry out the tasks and actions required to engaging in work preparation, acquiring, keeping and terminating a job and to engage in remunerative and non-remunerative employment.

Providing information to improve knowledge about enjoying all nationally and internationally recognised rights that are accorded to people by virtue of their humanity alone.

Providing or making changes to public spaces, structures and amenities to improve services and systems that provide benefits, structured programmes and operations, in various sectors of society to meet the needs of people.

Time-critical dissemination of information to health services and systems about health issues and/or action to be taken.

Providing comfort, empathy or motivational support to the person in relation to developing basic and complex competencies in integrated sets of actions or tasks so as to initiate and follow through with the acquisition of a skill.

Ongoing, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of data to support the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice in relation to services, systems and policies.

Providing structured information to improve knowledge about carrying out simple or complex and coordinated actions to manage and control the psychological demands required to carry out tasks demanding significant responsibilities and involving stress, distraction, or crises.

Providing information to improve knowledge in order to enhance the personal characteristics and social resources possessed by individuals and communities that enable them to access, understand, appraise and use health information and health services, and make decisions about health

Working together and cooperating with relevant stakeholders to enhance the personal characteristics and social resources possessed by individuals and communities that enable them to access, understand, appraise and use health information and health services, and make decisions about health.