Care Service Staff's Awareness of the Management of Undernutrition in Japan

Abstract

This study aimed to help develop collaborative care models for care service staff working in homes and residential facilities to implement measures for the improvement of undernutrition in terms of nursing care. The survey is care service staff 's awareness of undernutrition including required information. Although nursing care providers were aware of the overall care-related needs of their care recipients, they were in somewhat knowledgeable level about the nutritional health/functioning status that can be assessed by the nutritional condition indices such as the BMI(body mass index) and serum albumin level. The results of this study suggest that the level of nursing care service providers' awareness of the improvement of undernutrition of the elderly in need of nursing care was not high; although in-home nursing care providers understood the overall picture of services or their tasks including the levels of nursing care required by elderly patients and their levels of independence in ADL(activities of daily living) according to their degrees of disabilities or dementia, they did not comprehend the nutritional status of their patients such as the styles of diet and intake of meals; and nursing care service providers in residential facilities were aware of the nutritional status of their patients, although they were not unable to understand the overall picture of services. There were significant differences in the levels of the awareness of the improvement of undernutrition by the types of nursing care-related professions ; for example, while consultants were only aware of the basics of services like the level of nursing care required by patients, nursing care providers understood the styles of diet as well as dental and choke-related conditions and health care professionals comprehended the intake of meals, BMI, and serum albumin level. The study results suggest that it is necessary to develop tools for the collection of care service-related information and assessment to be shared by care service staff to improve undernutrition to prevent the elderly from becoming to require higher levels of nursing care. ＜Key-words＞ the elderly in need of nursing care, the prevention of the elderly from becoming to require higher levels of nursing care, improvement of undernutrition, the level of nursing care

Indices of Undernutrition in the Care-dependent Elderly

“…Both those providing home and facility care services showed poor awareness of this issue, as they rarely clarify their clients' BMI or serum albumin (Alb) levels as indices of the nutritional status (Table 1) 5) .…”

“…In contrast, in the home group in which care dependency was generally mild, and normal oral and physical functions were maintained, only a decreased dietary intake may have influenced the nutritional status. These results may be useful to address the poor awareness of the nutritional status of the care-dependent elderly among those providing Long-term Care Insurance services 5) , and …”

Relationship of “Tooth Condition” with Mobility and Cognitive Function of Residents in Special Elderly Nursing Homes Practicing Functional Recovery Care

“…The world has been facing the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, and older people, who are at a higher risk of exacerbation of infection, are considered to have an increased risk of becoming care-dependent due to the decline of physical and cognitive functions and frailty caused by a worsening nutritional state. 1) We have studied "malnutrition" and increased the necessity for care and clarified causes of the lack of improvement in "malnutrition" in older people by pointing out problems including the insufficiency of awareness of workers providing long-term care insurance survices, 2) relationship between the nutritional state and decline of physical/mental functions in older people requiring nursing care, 3) and the absence of nutritional education for care managers. 4) Concerning cooperation for "improving nutrition", we proposed the necessity of organic cooperation by the standardization of assessment and utilization of ICT.…”

Structure of Care Managers' Approaches to and Awareness of "Nutritional Improvement" for Care-dependent Older People

“…This may be attributable to the absence of systems whereby identifying the risk of malnutrition among care service users (analysis) leads to care approaches that facilitate nutrition improvement (problem-solving). Regarding the identification of such a risk, in 2014, researchers conducted an awareness survey concerning the nutritional conditions of older people requiring care involving nursing care insurance service workers, and revealed that both home-based and facility workers were hardly aware of BMI values and Alb levels, which are indices of nutritional conditions (Fujio & Kodaira, 2014). These results suggested that information-gathering and -sharing for identifying the risk of malnutrition were not standardized.…”