In care homes, disease-related malnutrition predisposes residents to infections, pressure ulcers and a greater number of days in bed.
Below we reveal statistics for the prevalence of malnutrition in social care settings in those with disease and with older people:
Residential Home 27%
Care Home 35%
Nursing Home 41%
And according to the Alzheimer's Association facts and figures report 2020 48% percent of nursing home residents are now living with Alzheimer's or other dementias
Up to 45 per cent of people living with dementia experience clinically significant weight loss over one year, and up to half of people with dementia in care homes have an inadequate food intake.
There is no doubt that getting people with Dementia to eat can be challenging.
Our MD Jo Bonser has lived experience of this having cared for her Mum living at home with vascular dementia for over 6 years, (How To Help And Encourage People With Dementia To Eat Better ) which led her to write our highly acclaimed free resource guide to help people with dementia to eat better, our Dignified Dining Solutions Guide.
In her book #Dine with Dignity, Unlocking the Mystery of Dementia and Dining, author Toni Fisk tells us there are 30 potential reasons why someone living with dementia might decline to eat
They may have problems eating putting them at risk of malnutrition, and they can experience complex interactions with the mealtime environment, which coupled with many potential eating difficulties can prevent nutritional intake
Malnourished individuals have poorer clinical outcomes and greater healthcare use which impacts on the health economy.
They will experience:
- Physical and functional decline which affects their strength, quality of life, recovery and immune response
- Poorer clinical outcomes including infections, wounds, complications, falls risk and mortality.:
- Greater healthcare use ie hospital admissions, readmissions, hospital stays, GP visits, prescription costs
The cost of not treating malnutrition is far greater than the cost of treating it.
Doing nothing will continue to impact on your costs; managing a malnourished patient will cost you more than 3x more at £1,645 for social care, than a non-malnourished patient of £440, respectively.
Tackling malnutrition can improve
- Nutritional status
- Clinical outcomes
- Reduced healthcare use
NB Due to the complex interactions with the mealtime environment, coupled with many potential eating difficulties which can prevent nutritional intake for people living with dementia, ensuring you are implementing a high quality and caring mealtime experience is a key strategy which can help to maintain mealtime independence, prevent malnutrition and improve quality of life for the people you support.
Therefore, investing in educating your staff and upgrading your dining environment and your meal time experience to help overcome mealtime eating difficulties and improve nutrition is one of the best business decisions you can make to help you to:
- Increase your residents wellbeing and quality of life
- Gain an improved reputation
- Improve your ratings with CQC
- Reduce your food wastage
- Save on your valuable nursing time
Here at Hcsuk, we have developed a range of totally unique services, based on Jo’s lived experience, designed to help care homes just like you improve your mealtime experience. Here’s how we can help you upgrade your mealtime experience:
- To help provide you with a platform and a starting point on your mealtime improvement journey why not download our FREE and highly acclaimed resource to help people living with dementia to eat better
- To initiate a real change in your mealtime culture and engage your teams you and your staff can watch our must have mealtime training video ‘Made with Love’
- To help you assess your current mealtime experience and learn about areas for improvement you can benefit from our comprehensive 50 point, dementia specific mealtime checklist completed with action plan
- To ensure your dining environment is supporting a positive mealtime experience for people living with dementia you can benefit from our Dementia Enabling Dining Environment Audit with follow up report and suggested improvements
- To educate your teams to deliver a 5 star dining experience you can experience our interactive training workshop ‘The Dementia Mealtime Challenge’
- To improve the presentation of your pureed meals you will gain from our Complete Food Mould Implementation Solution providing you with all the tools you need to create delicious and appetising pureed meals for your residents with swallowing difficulties
- To help overcome mealtime eating difficulties for the people you support we can help you to create individual and personalised mealtime plans.
- To assist you overcome specific mealtime challenges and achieve your desired you can engage us in outcomes bespoke mealtime consultancy projects, where we work with you to create and implement a strategy for continuous improvement.
If you’d like to have a free no obligation discovery call to find out more about how we can help, you can simply organise it online by clicking the following link to Jo’s (our Mealtime Consultant and Trainer) diary and book in at your convenience
https://calendly.com/jo--170/discovery-call
And if you haven’t already, why not download our FREE Dignified Dining Solutions Guide resource to help you support people living with dementia to eat better here.
Image Source: Unsplash
