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Thursday, September 14, 2006

Social Care Institute for Excellence

A useful link here to Social Care Online the website for the Social Care Institute for Excellence where you can access the UK's most complete range of information and research on all aspects of social care - for free.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Nutrition in Care Settings: problems in NHS.

30 August 2006


Health Minister Caroline Flint claimed yesterday that there is no excuse for pensioners starving on hospital wards when she admitted that some patients did suffer from malnutrition. She insists however that the problem is being tackled. Her comments came after Age Concern launched its Hungry to Help campaign.

Nine out of 10 nurses admitted they did not have time to help pensioners who needed help to eat and it has been estimated that almost 60 per cent of elderly patients are at risk of going hungry.

Undernourishment delays recovery and malnourished patients tend to stay in hospital longer. Age Concern estimates this costs the NHS an extra £7.3billion a year.

Mrs Flint said guidelines had been drawn up instructing staff how to help with nutrition. An autumn summit of nursing leaders is to discuss how to implement them.


She said on GMTV: "There is no excuse for people coming into our hospitals not being fed properly. I am afraid to say there are still places, probably too many, where this still happens."


The Royal College of Nursing spokeswoman Pauline Ford said Age Concern's findings proved wards were seriously understaffed. "For so many nurses, time has become a luxury. It is unacceptable if patients are not getting the help they need to eat or drink. Nurses desperately want to be able to give the standards of care they were trained to give but need the support and resources to do so. Most importantly, they need to be given the time to care." Liberal


Democrat health spokeswoman Sandra Gidley said it was due to frontline staff being overstretched and added; "All too often I hear of elderly patients who have had food placed in front of them with no one to help them eat it."


According to Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern ; "Hospitals are in danger of becoming bad for the health of older people. The majority of older patients are being denied some of the basic care they need, leaving hundreds of thousands of older patients malnourished. It is shocking that the dignity of patients is being overlooked and that Age Concern has to run a campaign to fight for the implementation of such simple measures. Food, and help with eating it, should be recognised by ward staff as an essential part of care and they should be given time to perform this task."

It is important to recognise though that this is not just a problem in NHS hospitals. In the Care Home sector there have also been problems identified with nutrition of residents. It is time that such fundamental aspects of care are given a much higher priority in all care settings. We cannot expect that people who are recieving care in any settng will enjoy either good health or a good quality of life if their basic human needs are not attended to.