IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jocnur/v15y2006i10p1221-1227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mealtimes in hospital – who does what?

Author

Listed:
  • Chenfan Xia
  • Helen McCutcheon

Abstract

Aim. This paper describes the findings of a descriptive study about what nurses do at mealtimes in relation to monitoring/assisting the eating practices of older patients in an acute care facility. Background. The prevalence of under nutrition is known to be high in hospitalized older patients and insufficient dietary intake is regarded as a major cause. However, most of the research tends to concentrate on the nursing home setting. Little is known about the situation in acute care facilities. Methods. Two medical wards participated in the study. Ward 1 had introduced a change of nurses’ meal break time and ward 2 continued with normal practice. Convenience sampling was used. Fifty nurses and 48 patients were observed at different mealtimes during two weeks. Four nurses and four patients who were observed were also interviewed. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results. Kitchen staff delivered all meals and collected the majority of the meal trays. Older patients did not receive enough assistance during mealtimes. Interruptions happened frequently and social interaction was neglected. About one‐third of patients observed left more than two‐third of their meals. Conclusion. Nutrition issues appeared to receive less priority in the ward than other nursing care activities and nurses’ assistance was generally insufficient and not provided in a timely manner. Relevance to clinical practice. Findings highlight the deficiency in practice that should suggest to nurses that they examine their practice and put into place strategies to ensure older patients are properly/adequately hydrated and receive sufficient nutrient intake.

Suggested Citation

  • Chenfan Xia & Helen McCutcheon, 2006. "Mealtimes in hospital – who does what?," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(10), pages 1221-1227, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:15:y:2006:i:10:p:1221-1227
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2006.01425.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2006.01425.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2006.01425.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dorthe Sørensen & Anna Rottensten Wieghorst & Johanne Andersen Elbek & Camilla Askov Mousing, 2020. "Mealtime challenges in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Who is responsible?," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(23-24), pages 4583-4593, December.
    2. Roger Watson, 2006. "Editorial: Mealtimes in hospital: when will we ever learn?," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(10), pages 1212-1212, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:15:y:2006:i:10:p:1221-1227. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2702 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.