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

Abstract

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.