Hospital malnutrition
Friday, 08 Feb 2008 10:15
Some patients are not being fed properly in hospital, doctors claim
One-fifth of patients in general hospitals are malnourished, thin or losing weight, medical experts have claimed.
According to a report in the British Medical Journal, eight out of ten of these patients enter and leave hospital without any action being taken to treat their malnutrition.
Dr Mike Lean from Glasgow Royal Infirmary and Dr Martin Wiseman from Southampton University say this is partly because screening tools are underused.
In 2006, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommended that patients should be screened and monitored regularly for malnutrition.
"However, these standards are weakly policed and are probably insufficient to stop many elderly people becoming malnourished if the quality of food is poor and there is a lack of staff to feed people," the doctors write.
They also claim that hospital food is provided by caterers who lack validated training in nutrition and that most hospitals have "no designated medical posts to oversee the complex scientific matters that underpin both artificial feeding and 'normal' food provision".
The doctors conclude that the "final solution" to malnutrition in hospital "probably lies in recognising human nutrition as a discrete discipline, in which all medical graduates should reach a minimum level of competence, and some will specialise".
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