Nursing Conferences Australia 2019

Nurses can make a difference when it comes to malnutrition

After falling at home and sustaining a left hip fracture, Charlotte struggled to regain her lost independence. As the pain medications led to constipation and nausea, Charlotte became less and less interested in eating. At 350 pounds, some of the staff commented that the unplanned weight loss of 20 pounds during the past two weeks might be good for her.

But is it?

The face of malnutrition isn’t always what you would anticipate. Unplanned weight loss and poor nutritional intake is never a benefit to healing or improved physical functioning.

Nursing Conference 2019

Our new interdisciplinary course “Malnutrition Alert! How to Improve Patient Outcomes” for #nurses, dietitians and physicians is designed to help you recognize the role that protein-calorie malnutrition plays in adult morbidity and mortality and to focus on the tasks required of the inter-professional team in preventing, diagnosing and treating malnutrition.

https://nursingcongress.nursingconference.com/speaker-guidelines.php

What’s behind the weight loss?

For many people who already have had a decline in muscle mass associated with aging, the addition of disease or injury leads to further loss of lean body mass and decline in functional abilities.

Up to 50% of hospitalized patients are at risk for or already have malnutrition, but only 7% actually receive a diagnosis during their hospital stay, according to an article in #Clinical Interventions in Aging and the Agency for #Healthcare Research and Quality.

Malnutrition diagnoses can significantly impact Medicare reimbursement and the case mix index for a facility.

Patients who are malnourished may not only have longer lengths of stay of up to four to six days, but also hospital costs twice as high for patients with malnutrition, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

In the new interdisciplinary course “Malnutrition Alert! How to Improve Patient Outcomes,” Terese Scollard, MBA, RDN, LD, FAND, a leading expert in malnutrition and a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics work group that designed and released the Consensus Statement on malnutrition in 2012, provides the guidelines you need to tackle this important condition.

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, malnutrition also can lead to:

• An increased risk of adverse events and complications
• A 54% higher likelihood of hospital 30-day readmission
• Up to 5 times more likely to die in the hospital than a non-malnourished patient
• It was difficult to diagnose malnutrition in the past as there were no widely accepted characteristics that clinicians could use to classify this condition consistently throughout all care settings.

What can you do to help?

• Recognize that malnutrition can have a significant impact on healing, length of stay and readmission rates.
• Refer patients of concern to your registered dietitian nutritionist for a comprehensive nutrition assessment.
• Avoid weight bias in identifying malnutrition. Patients of any size can become malnourished.
• Ensure that accurate weights and meal percentages are documented.
• Communicate your concerns with the primary care provider.

For further details please visit:
https://nursingcongress.nursingconference.com/registration.php