Nutrition and Hydration

Abstract

Malnutrition and dehydration are important aspects of the care of older people, particularly those in hospitals or in long-term care facilities. Many older people do not eat and drink adequately during hospital stays and, following hip fracture, many patients achieve only a half of their recommended daily energy, protein and other nutritional requirements [1]. This leads to poor recovery and diminished health status and functional ability and results in a higher risk of other complications (Chap. 6).Nurses are the coordinators of the care process, so it is essential that they bring other health-care specialists together as a team to collaboratively provide highquality care that reflects patients' needs for assessment, intervention and health promotion. When an interdisciplinary team (orthogeriatric collaboration) work together care is more successful, improves patient outcomes and reduces the risk of the inhospital and long-term mortality.The aim of this chapter is to increase awareness of nurses' responsibility, within a multidisciplinary team, for assessment and intervention of nutrition and hydration, examine the issues pertaining to nutrition and fluid balance in older people and outline the nature, assessment and interventions relating to malnutrition and dehydration. Learning OutcomesAt the end of the chapter, and following further study, the nurse will be able to:

Assessing the performance of clinical diagnostic models for dehydration among patients with cholera and undernutrition in Bangladesh

“…The full NIRUDAK model also performed significantly better than the WHO IMAI algorithm among patients with wasting, though the simplified NIRUDAK model did not (Appendix 2). Several studies have suggested that overall appearance and abnormal physiological responses during clinical assessment are distorted in children and adults with wasting [56,57]. As such, many of the clinical signs that are normally used to assess dehydration, such as skin pinch or general appearance, are often unreliable in these patients, making it difficult to accurately determine dehydration severity.…”