Evaluation of Hospital Food Consumption and the Reasons for Food Refusal in Patients Admitted to Imam Reza Hospital (AS) by Ward

Abstract

Inadequate food intake in hospitalized patients leads to malnutrition which causes numerous negative adverse effects, including increased mortality and the length of hospital stay. The present study aimed to investigate the rate of food intake of hospitalized patients in Imam Reza Medical Hospital.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on the patients admitted to Imam Reza Hospital in Mashhad in 2019. The data gathering tool was a checklist that is part of the standard Nutrition Day checklist. The selected section of this standard checklist measures the patient's food intake and the reason for food refusal. The obtained data were analyzed in  SPSS  software (version 16).

As evidenced by the obtained results, the patients hospitalized in the cardiovascular ward  (85.7%) and gastroenterology department  (81.3%) had the highest rate of food consumption, whereas the lowest consumption was related to the patient of the trauma department  (63.2%). Food refusal was due to nausea and vomiting, anorexia, and reluctance to eat certain foods. The highest nutrition education was conducted in the departments of gastroenterology and hepatology (37.5%) and oncology (33.3%).

Hospital managers need to take effective measures to increase nurses' awareness of the importance of specialized nutrition education. Furthermore, there is a need to increase the number of nutritionists in patients' bedside.