Are Nutritional Care Adequate for Elderly Hospitalized Patients? A Cross-Sectional Study

This article assesses nutritional care in identifying and treating nutritional risk in elderly hospitalized patients. A cross-sectional study was conducted at a large Norwegian University hospital in the period 2011 to 2013. Data on nutritional risk and care for elderly patients (≥70 years) without dementia were collected at 20 wards by 173 second-year nursing students in acute-care clinical studies. A stratified sampling technique was utilized to improve the representativeness of the sample. In total, 508 patients (48.8% women) with a mean age of 79.6 years participated. The internationally and nationally recommended nutritional care was not implemented at the hospital, suggesting that nutritional care for elderly hospitalized patients was not adequate. This implies that the majority of the elderly patients nutritionally at risk are neither identified nor treated according to their needs. The article highlights the importance of having systematic nutritional care practices to make it possible for the hospital ward staff to routinely identify nutritional risk and initiate appropriate nutritional treatment measures.

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Prevalence of nutritional risk in the non-demented hospitalised elderly: a cross-sectional study from Norway using stratified sampling

Journal of Nutritional Science ◽

10.1017/jns.2015.8 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Helene K. Eide ◽

Jūratė Šaltytė Benth ◽

Kjersti Sortland ◽

Kristin Halvorsen ◽

Kari Almendingen

Keyword(s):

At Risk ◽

Elderly Patients ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Stratified Sampling ◽

University Hospital ◽

Nutritional Risk ◽

Average Weight ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Hospital Wards

AbstractThere is a lack of accurate prevalence data on undernutrition and the risk of undernutrition among the hospitalised elderly in Europe and Norway. We aimed at estimating the prevalence of nutritional risk by using stratified sampling along with adequate power calculations. A cross-sectional study was carried out in the period 2011 to 2013 at a university hospital in Norway. Second-year nursing students in acute care clinical studies in twenty hospital wards screened non-demented elderly patients for nutritional risk, by employing the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002) form. In total, 508 patients (48·8 % women and 51·2 % men) with a mean age of 79·6 (sd 6·4) years were screened by the students. Mean BMI was 24·9 (sd 4·9) kg/m2, and the patients had been hospitalised for on average 5·3 (sd 6·3) d. WHO's BMI cut-off values identified 6·5 % as underweight, 48·0 % of normal weight and 45·5 % as overweight. Patients nutritionally at risk had been in hospital longer and had lower average weight and BMI compared with those not at risk (all P < 0·001); no differences in mean age or sex were observed. The prevalence of nutritional risk was estimated to be 45·4 (95 % CI 41·7 %, 49·0) %, ranging between 20·0 and 65·0 % on different hospital wards. The present results show that the prevalence of nutritional risk among elderly patients without dementia is high, suggesting that a large proportion of the hospitalised elderly are in need of nutritional treatment.

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