Managers 'responsible' for nutrition

MANAGERS should be disciplined for failing to provide enough nurses on wards, the government has said.

MANAGERS should be disciplined for failing to provide enough nurses on wards, the government has said.

Junior health minister Ivan Lewis stated it was vital there were adequate nurse numbers to ensure patients were given help with eating and drinking.

'Managers need to support nurses, and managers who neglect to care for older people should be subject to discipline too,' he said last week, while announcing the government's action plan for improving nutritional care for older people.

'Managers must consider the fact that on some wards in hospitals, where you have a very high proportion of older people with dementia, you're going to need more nurses,' Mr Lewis added. 'If they don't, they're failing in the responsibility to support nurses.'

The action plan, Improving Nutritional Care, pulls together good practice and current guidance into five key priorities to ensure patients are adequately nourished and hydrated.

It calls for nurses or HCAs to screen patients on a weekly basis to reduce the risk of them becoming malnourished.

The plan also reiterates an NMC commitment to assess all nursing students on their use of nutrition principles in practice from September next year.

Mr Lewis said he was not surprised students needed to be taught how to feed patients. 'It's about the way the professions have changed. Almost all the fundamentals and basics have been put to one side,' he said.

While welcoming the plan the RCN said it should be mandatory rather than guidance.

'Feedback we've received from RCN members and district nurses is that they felt it would be much more helpful for them to have mandatory standards,' said Debbie Dzik-Jurasz, head of the RCN's Nutrition Now campaign.