Patients and nutrition.

While preparing for your exams it’s good to keep in mind what your role will be in the not so far future, that being the person in charge of healing and recovery for delicate patients, no matter the specialty or age of your patients this will be your responsibility.

Up to 40 per cent of those admitted to hospital are underweight (Audit Commission, 2001) and many lose weight while in hospital. It is estimated that up to 60 per cent of hospital patients are clinically malnourished (Malnutrition Advisory Group, 2003).

The nutrition part of a patient as part of an integral approach for their recovery is a topic always overlooked while in the rounds, you focus more on treatment, lab results etc. and rarely take the time to think about your patients nutrition, this is something I always thought the best attendants had, a mind on the details, after all there is a good chance that an improved diet can help those in bed to recover faster.

Of course there is personnel attending nutrition for inpatients but as the person in charge of each one of the patients in your guard you should also have a saying in what they should be eating, absolutely no one likes boiled chicken and tasteless gelatin.

Thinking of nutrition as part of an integral therapy, it’s important to remember the requirements to improve granulation, scar formation, boost immune response, blood cell count, collagen formation etc. and use this knowledge to improve the patients nutrition, patients in recovery should have more fresh vegetables, fruits and nuts and in a greater variety to meet those requirements.

This is where you should aim your nutritional advice to increase nutrients available for a fast recovery, to make all possible requirements fulfilled during their treatment; this also means to improve overall nutrition while under your care. Of course nutrition is a topic both complicated and controversial for some institutions but that shouldn’t stop you from using your own logic to improve the patient’s nutrition while under your care, this means using all available information to improve a patient’s condition, using fresh food to meet the requirements without doing controversial practices.

Multivitamins, cold press juices, salads, fruit and nut snacks are all practices that should improve the available nutrients as well as quality proteins when available, use the patients family to help if necessary, the important part of this advice is that as future attendants you should keep in mind that there is a need to improve the nutrition of a patient while under your care that also can be reflected on the recovery process.

Thanks again for taking your time to read our posts, as always we invite you to visit us at www.usmleprepguide.com and check out our tutoring guides for the USMLE series, also if you have any comments please leave them at the bottom,