Visit nutritional guidance for patients at home

Abstract

　The role of home-visit nutritional support is to collect information about nutritional issue during nutrition screening or assessment and to manage the plan of nutritional care for each case with inter-professional collaboration in home-care settings.

　Registered dietitians counsel patients and/or their family for appropriate methods of nutrient intakes. They analyze the cause of anorexia gathering detailed information about nutrition issue from interview and observation of mealtimes.

　To provide appropriate nutritional management services, it is important for the dietitians to understand living environment including the burden of caregivers, economic, and social factors. In home-care settings, these are several nutritional problems, which include the economic conditions, difficulty purchasing food, no exists cooker and unfit taste food.

　These problems may cause anorexia or malnutrition according to decrease food intake and induce decreased quality of life (QOL) and activities of daily living (ADL) of the elderly patients at home.

　The main aim of intervention by registered dietitian is to improve malnutrition related dysphagia and lifestyle-related diseases. Registered dietitian advises caregiver about cooking in order to promote the application of nutritional support programs. However, most of caregivers are elderly spouse with physical and psychological health problems. Thus, it is important to suggest them some simple recipes and menus considering burden among caregivers.

　Suitable home-visit nutritional support program can improve their nutritional situation, QOL, and ADL for elderly patients living at home.