This week is Malnutrition Week (9-13 October), and we are calling on you to embrace this year’s theme “Be a Nutrition Champion” to promote nutrition’s vital role for our patients in preventing and treating malnutrition.
As outlined in the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, Standard 5: Comprehensive Care, and detailed in Monash Health’s Malnutrition Clinical Guideline (PROMPT), we have a responsibility to lower malnutrition rates in hospitals and advocate a multidisciplinary approach to patient care.
What can I do to promote nutrition care?
Nutrition care requires a team-based approach to identify, prevent, and manage malnutrition. Some of the ways you can support nutrition care include:
- Asking a patient’s food preferences when ordering their meals
- Setting up a meal tray
- Sitting out of bed for meals
- Encouraging eating while their meal is hot
- Recognising and documenting when a patient isn’t eating well
- Recording weekly weights
Patients and their families play an important role in mobile meal ordering and bringing food from home.
To help offer practical tips and empower patients to take control of their nutrition, we will be placing flyers on meal trays this week.
Changing lives, one meal at a time
Hear how our Nutrition Champions are making a difference:
“Nutrition is very important for all patients, especially after surgery, for wound healing, preventing infections, and can shorten hospital stays. I help patients pick appropriate meals and drinks to suit their diet codes and use the translating apps or pictures of food items if they’re from non-English speaking backgrounds.
“I liaise with Dietitians and Speech Pathologists to identify strategies to put in place to increase the variety of a patient’s diet if they are eating poorly. One patient who was provided with menu extras started to eat more, becoming better, and ended up going home. He was very thankful for helping him with his menu choices and reported that his hospital stay was greatly improved.
“I love seeing how much I can help patients throughout their journey and how food choices affect their hospital stay.”
Srdjan Savic (Menu Monitor, Victorian Heart Hospital)
“Eating well is important for everyday health, but for people going through a cancer diagnosis, nutrition can make a huge difference to their wellbeing. Screening our patients for malnutrition is an important part of a nurse’s job.
“We are the first step to recognise major weight loss, especially in patients in chemotherapy, as they tend to lose muscle, which can be a bigger problem in the long term.
Once we see that a patient is struggling with regular meals or losing interest in food, we bring in our dietitians.“
Mara Pattison-Sowden (Nurse, Chemotherapy Day Unit, Moorabbin)
“In the Chemotherapy Day Unit, I’m part of a team of volunteers, nurses, and a dietitian. We work together to make sure our patients are well-nourished.
“I understand that good nutrition not only helps them stay strong for their daily lives but also supports them through their cancer treatment.
“I get immense satisfaction in being a PSA and recognise the remarkable power of food, knowing that a well-enjoyed meal can truly make a difference to how a patient feels, both physically and mentally.”
Maureen MacPherson (Patient Service Assistant, Chemotherapy Day Unit, Moorabbin)
To learn more about how we manage malnutrition at Monash Health, please contact your ward dietitian.
Approved by: Danielle Ryan, Chief Allied Health Officer