Care home nutritional choice

7 items 2 sources

Over-reliance on ready meals and insufficient provision of fresh food, limiting personalised meal choices for residents in care settings.

Care home nutritional choice has been flagged across 2 independent accountability sources:

2 inquiry recs 5 PFD reports

This issue has been identified by multiple independent accountability bodies, suggesting it is a recurring systemic concern.

Recommendation: The arrangements and best practice for providing food and drink to elderly patients require constant review, monitoring and implementation.

Gov response: The government published "Hard Truths: the Journey to Putting Patients First" (Cm 8777) on 19 November 2013, responding to all 290 recommendations of the Francis Report. This followed an initial response "Patients First and Foremost" …

Recommendation: Health Boards should ensure that all patients have their nutritional status screened on admission to a ward using a recognised nutritional screening tool.

Gov response: Section 4.1 of the Scottish Government's response acknowledges the report's criticisms of specific elements of nursing care, including the unsatisfactory assessment and recording of patients' nutritional status. The government unreservedly accepts in full the report's …

Concerns: A patient was removed from a soft food diet without proper assessment or documentation, and external food was not checked for suitability by care home staff, risking future deaths.

Concerns: Inaccurate record-keeping, due to carers transposing details from other residents, led to incorrect dietary information for a resident, posing a risk to future patient safety.

Concerns: Care homes lack routine speech and language therapy assessments for denture changes, leading to unsuitable diets and increased choking risk due to delayed dental services. Furthermore, care homes do not routinely have suction machines for choking emergencies.

Concerns: The healthcare system lacks sufficient provision for sustained supported eating for anorexia nervosa patients, leading to ineffective hospital admissions and hindering patient improvement despite clinical recommendations.

Concerns: Prolonged social isolation for a patient with C. difficile negatively impacted her well-being, compounded by inadequate nutritional information recording and assessment.