To describe a feasible quality improvement system to manage feeding assistance care processes in an assisted living facility (ALF) that provides dementia care and the use of these data to maintain the quality of daily care provision and prevent unintentional weight loss.
Up to 70% of elderly hospital patients require some feeding assistance [ 44], which is increasingly delivered by patient care assistants as opposed to nurses whose role at mealtimes and responsibilities for patient's nutritional status has diminished in recent years [ 18, 45, 46].
Inadequate feeding assistance and mealtime interruptions during hospitalisation may contribute to malnutrition and poor nutritional intake in older people.
Studies worldwide have identified that some older patients with good appetites do not receive sufficient nourishment because of inadequate feeding assistance.
The effectiveness of combining interventions (nutrition screening, provision of oral nutritional supplements, and flagging patients for feeding assistance) in preventing nutritional decline is unknown.
Recently the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), citing increasing resident acuity, staffing shortages, and high turnover rates that make it difficult for nursing homes to provide adequate feeding assistance to residents who need minimal help at mealtimes, began allowing nursing facilities to use single-task workers to provide assistance during mealtimes.
This article describes the use of single-task workers to provide feeding assistance to nutritionally at-risk residents during a 6-month clinical study designed to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of implementing a buffet-dining program in an academic long-term care facility.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of megestrol acetate (Megace ®OS; Bristol-Myers Squibb, PriNJeton, NJ) on the oral food and fluid intake of nursing home (NH) residents under two conditions: usual NH care and optimal mealtime feeding assistance.
If we wonder why a malnourished baby couldn't be left with his mother, perhaps even with in-home feeding assistance or regular monitoring, we're met with stony silence.
In Table 5, the results of patients' responses to the question about feeding assistance are presented.
Other studies evaluated the effect of flavour enhancers [ 77], dietary restriction [ 80], family-style dining arrangements [ 75, 129] and the provision of feeding assistance [ 76].
