Summative Assignment Question Please choose from the following topics; What are the most effective measures to reduce pressure injury in hospitalised patients? How can the risk of falls be reduced...

HOW CAN MALNUTRITION BE IDENTIFIED AND ASSESSED IN HOSPITALISED ELDERLY PATIENTS?
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Search    4
Discussion    7
Conclusion    11
Implications for Practice    12
References    14
Appendix    16
Introduction
Malnutrition in elderly people is one of the negative outcomes including mo
idity, mortality, declining physical and mental functioning. Malnutrition is a condition or disorder, which is the outcome of improper or insufficient nutrition intake. This leads to chronic diseases, weakness, immunity loss, severe weight loss, and sometimes, death. The elderly staying at a healthcare sector, hospital or rehabilitation generally go through adverse physical, emotional or mental situations. Taking care of them in accord to the nutritional guidelines is challenging and sometimes results in improper diet, which leads to malnutrition.
Weak muscles, decreased or no movement, bed ridden for long time give rise to many infection and pain (Silver et al. 2018). Some elderly lose grip of muscular movement, swallowing capacity or weak digestive system. All these lead to their low interest in taking meal. However, this issue at hospitals are less emphasised and not taken care of. Studies say that due to lack of proper procedure, guidelines, and documentation at healthcare, this case is un-recognised. Malnutrition at any age affects the body’s normal functioning. In case of elderly, this can result in severe damage because of their poor health. Thus, proper attention and care are needed to tackle this situation and overcome it.
In this assignment, various research articles relevant to the topic of “Malnutrition in hospitalised elderly” will be taken using search engines by giving certain key words. The relevant research articles and studies based on the mentioned topics will give various ideologies on this matter. The analysis of the research and studies from the articles would give an overview on global epidemics, identification, causes and assessment of malnutrition in hospitalised elderly. In addition, role of nursing in this case will be emphasised from the literature studies. Further steps to be taken, cu
ent studies and research for future aspects will also be discussed in the same. Finally, in the conclusion, the key points from the searched articles will be discussed in
ief and the reflective understanding will be described in light of the mentioned topic.
Search
The search is conducted on the topic “How can malnutrition be identified and assessed in hospitalised elderly patients?” The search of articles was done using various search engines such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and Science Direct. The full articles were obtained for most of these papers. Some information from the abstract of the inaccessible papers was also taken.
In the search of articles for this mentioned topic, following were the search criteria:
Inclusion:
The search included the following criteria:
1. Keywords used: Identification of Malnutrition in elderly patient, Assessment of malnutrition elderly patients, Malnutrition in elderly, Malnutrition in hospitalised elderly, nutritional assessment in hospitalised elderly, geriatric malnutrition, elderly patients, malnutrition, Mini Nutritional Assessment
2. Language: Only English publications were considered for the study
3. Publication date or year: Only articles after the year 2015 were considered
Exclusion:
The search didn’t include/ excluded the following criteria
1. Key words: Malnutrition in young/infants/newborns/ people under 50, Malnutrition in people who are not hospitalised, patients hospitalised, nutrition at hospitals (or any other i
elevant key word)
2. Language: Research articles in any other language than English were not considered.
3. Publication Date or Year: Any article not published within last 5 years, or that were too old were not considered.
An overview of the same has been given in the appendix.
After the search was complete, around 13 research articles related to the mentioned topic were chosen for study and analysis. Based on these articles the analysis was done according to some of the key features such as epidemiology, occu
ence of such condition or disorder, identification of malnutrition in the cu
ent scenario, role of hospitals and nursing sectors, tools and methods to assess nutritional index in elderly, possible outcomes and achievements. The researches have been ca
ied out in a local area, or they are country specific. However, an overall idea from all these papers can be
ought into picture that malnutrition is elderly patient or elderly hospitalised people is increasing and commonly found but despite being one of the serious issues, it has not been considered enough to solve.
However, as argued by Baillie and Thomas (2009), considering the previous studies, lack of reports and information on the topic, and several cases of under-recognition of this condition, most of the research articles have emphasised on specific assessment tools of nutrition index for elderly in hospitals and healthcare facilities. Most of the researches are based on the reports and studies conducted through usage of various assessment tools and providing their perspectives on these on-going issues. Many of them have also outlined the concern of not being provided with any cu
ent assessment criteria or rules at the hospitals for which the case study has been under seen.
The paper by Iliadis et al. (2016) highlighted the impact of malnutrition at the age above 60 in a biological and physical prospective. This paper also mentions that one third of the patient who are elderly and are hospitalised are affected by malnutrition. In the research paper by Demeny et al. (2015), a survey of dieticians who were associated with hospitalised elderly was ca
ied out. According to them, there is need of certain protocols for assessment of the nutritional status and associated risk factors of the elderly at those places. The research was done in Australia by Dietician’s Association of Australia.
Likewise, a study by Alzahrani and Alamri (2017), on the patients of University of Saudi Arabia, suggested that malnutrition can prolong the hospital stay of hospitalised elderly and is also associated with mo
idity. In this case, the research was ca
ied out using the Mini Nutritional Assessment tool. A paper by Aziz et al. (2017) suggested a literature study and review on the nutritional status of elderly one use of various assessment tools for the nutritional status assessment. They have concluded that there is a significant requirement of a specific standard tool for this purpose to minimise this condition in this age group.
A more or less same conclusion has been derived from a study by (Dent et al. 2017). This paper discusses about how most of the patients admitted to the hospital are already at risk or attain the risk of malnutrition because of various factors. The same tool of Mini Nutrition Assessment tool was used to ca
y out the research on the concerned area. It was concluded that an appropriate policy is required in the hospitals to minimise such incidents in the future (Eide et al. 2015). In the study, it is observed that malnutrition affects more than 3 million people in UK.
The extensive use of the tool Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) is suggested to be regularly used in the healthcare sectors....