Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder that appears as a symptom of different diseases that can affect the area of the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, and gastroesophageal junction. Dysphagia tends to leave many negative consequences and often impaires quality of life, causing malnutrition and dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, chronic pneumonia, impaired general health, suffocation and even death. The prevalence of all diseases is increased with age, including also dysphagia. Taking that into consideration elderly in nursing home settings are at a particularly high risk. Given the high prevalence of dysphagia in the elderly, a dysphagia screening protocol in nursing homes would facilitate the recognition of dysphagia signs and risk factors responsible for its occurrence. Early recognition of possible swallowing disorders and subsequent diagnosis could prevent consequent complications, comorbidities, but also improve the safety and quality of life of patients by providing the necessary intervention. The aim of this work is to determine the risk for the occurrence of swallowing disorders and/or early signs of swallowing disorders. Also, the insight into the recognition or non recognition of the risk is gained, using the screening tests Eating Assessment Tool (Belafsky et al. 2008) and Mini Nutritional Assessment (Nestle Nutritional Institute, 1994) and/or difficulty swallowing and nutritional status on a sample collected in a nursing home. The goal of the work is also to document the functional possibilities of oral intake, i.e. the ways of feeding the users of the home for the elderly and infirm, by implementing the Functional Oral Intake Scale (Crary et al., 2005). Based on the completed assessment tools, people at risk for developing dysphagia will be singled out. This paper will try to point out the importance of possible early and timely recognition of risk factors for the development of swallowing disorders, problems and needs of people with swallowing disorders. Given that in the Republic of Croatia employing speech language pathologysts in nursing home settings is still not a practice, a key part of prevention is informing other experts in order to promote the importance of the speech language pathology profession in the prevention and intervention of swallowing disorders in the elderly.