Your Stories: Mercy’s Cancer Center Promotes Feeding Tube Awareness
February 14, 2025Categories: Colleague Corner
Feeding Tube Awareness Week (FTAW), February 2-8, is an annual event to help inform people about feeding tubes and their role as critical life-saving interventions. To mark FTAW, Rachel Sapelli, MS, RD, LDN, Outpatient Oncology Dietitian, joined colleagues in revamping the “starter kits” of supplies for patients requiring placement of a feeding tube as part of cancer treatment.
Tube feeding supplies kits for patients at Mercy's Sister Caritas Cancer Center
Each bag contains instructions and various feeding and site care items. The cancer center nurse navigators coordinate home tube teaching, ideally the day after a tube is placed. These kits are used for initial education and can help to bridge the gap between a tube placement procedure and a full home infusion supplies delivery which may be delayed waiting on insurance authorization.
Early nutrition support interventions, including tube feeding, can improve a patient’s quality of life by easing symptoms such as malnutrition, dehydration, and discomfort with eating. For more information about feeding tubes and how to raise awareness visit the Oley Foundation website at https://oley.org.
Submitted by Rachel Sapelli, MS, RD, LDN, Outpatient Oncology Dietitian.