In support of Nutrition & Hydration Week 2024, healthcare sector meals provider, apetito, has launched a webinar titled ‘Nutrition & Hydration Delivered Safely’, featuring its inhouse dietitians, Emily Stuart and Sophia Cornelius, setting out useful information for healthcare professionals and hospital caterers to consider when building nutritional pathways for patients.
Emily and Sophia welcome Nutrition & Hydration Week and discuss some of the key characteristics of good nutrition and hydration whilst sharing useful advice on how hospital caterers and healthcare Trusts can embrace best practice.
Together, they highlight the value of screening all patients with a validated screening tool, such as MUST, (The ‘Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool’) which was developed by the Malnutrition Advisory Group, a standing committee of BAPEN and has been reviewed regularly since its launch in 2003. Emily and Sophia explore the benefit of using MUST to create ‘person centred care plans’ that give effective measurements that help aid positive and effective outcomes for nutritionally vulnerable patients.
A further discussion point is around the value of empowering the individual in their dietary choices – especially in healthcare settings where choices may be limited, or illness removes choice due to the need for specialist care and dietary requirements, leaving a patient feeling disengaged from the process.
The webinar also debates the value of ‘protected mealtimes’ and looks at the challenges and influencing factors in encouraging patients to eat well and ensure good hydration at mealtimes.
Neil Hargreaves, General Manager for apetito Healthcare, says that the webinar is a useful reference point for hospital caterers and dietitians: “Good nutrition and hydration may seem like common sense to all of us in a healthcare setting, but the facts released by the NHS show that more than 800,000 patients were admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies last year – that’s a three-fold increase on 10 years ago.
“In our webinar, Emily and Sophia hold a useful discussion drawing from many years of knowledge and experience, which we believe will be of real value to professionals looking to deliver best practice”.
