What’s New


• NEWS • NEWS • NEWS • NEWS • NEWS • NEWS • Keeping you up-to-date with the latest news, views, reviews & developments


All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)


– Calling all Local MPs BAPEN to provide Secretariat for new APPG Nutritional Care including Hydration


Safe Nutritional Care saves lives, improves clinical and care outcomes and patient experience, and saves money – and its official! The evidence on the effectiveness of paying attention to nutrition to improve the quality of care is now accepted at the highest levels of policy and practice. This acceptance presents health and care professionals with an ideal opportunity to improve outcomes whilst also reducing costs across national, regional and local NHS and social care budgets. Successful and timely implementation, however, will be challenging given the current climate. To maintain focus on nutritional care, including hydration, and to continue to press for implementation at national and local levels, a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) is being set up in Westminster with the support of members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, managed by a Secretariat provided by BAPEN. The aim of the APPG is to ensure that nutritional care remains high on the agenda of delivering Safe Quality Care at all levels and does not ‘get lost’ in the current activity of budget cuts and NHS reorganisation.


BAPEN with many other professional partners have


long campaigned for nutritional care to take its rightful place as a key determinant of improved health outcomes and reduced health inequalities. The current advantage must not be allowed to slip through our fingers and the APPG will help in that endeavour by both challenging Government and DH at the highest level and supporting local MPs to press for local implementation to the benefit of all constituents. All BAPEN members and readers of In Touch can help by identifying their local MP, writing to them at their constituency office and asking what they know about the importance of nutritional care and how it is being delivered locally. The letter can point them to the newly set up APPG of which they can become members and provide my contact as the Secretariat for the group (rhonda.smith@bapen.org.uk). If you would like more information, or to discuss your letter to your MP, please do not hesitate to contact me by email as above or by phone 07887- 714957


Rhonda Smith, Secretariat APPG – Nutritional Care including Hydration


Need to get back ‘In Touch’!


Can’t find your copy of the last issue? Need to look at something specific in a past issue of In Touch?


As a Member of BAPEN you have access to back issues of In Touch via the Membership section on the BAPEN website: www.bapen.org.uk From now on back issues will be uploaded to the BAPEN website in a new, exciting format – as an interactive, digital e-publication – allowing you to flip easily through the publication, access links of interest at the click of a button and zoom in on information that is of particular interest.


Social Networking with BAPEN!


Want to know what’s going on with all things related BAPEN more often? Then make sure you are networking with BAPEN online via: BAPEN’s facebook page, find us on facebook:


www.facebook.com/pages/BAPEN-British-Association-for- Parenteraland-EnteralNutrition/291856937810?ref=ts&v=wall


TM


Don’t miss BAPEN tweets and follow us on Twitter@BAPENUK


3 BAPEN In Touch No.58 August 2010


Nutrition Screening Week (NSW11)


6th – 8th April 2011


Help BAPEN collect data on malnutrition on admission to hospital and care in Spring and sign up to take part in the fourth Nutrition Screening Week.


Save the date – and watch the BAPEN website for further information.


Study Links Malnutrition and Depression in Elderly Hospital Patients


Over half of malnourished patients in hospital also show signs of depression, according to a small-scale study* presented at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which took place in Edinburgh (June 2010).


Doctors from Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust in London studied 129 elderly patients who were admitted to medical wards in August 2009. They were assessed for malnutrition (using the Liverpool nutritional score**) and depression. The mean age of the patients was 80.2 years. 70 (54%) of the patients showed signs of malnutrition and 60 (47%) had depression. 40 of the 70 malnourished patients (57%) were also depressed. Of the non-malnourished patients, only 9 (15%) were depressed.


Dr Shakil Alam, lead author of the study, said:


“We found that nutritional deficit was significantly associated with depression. However, further research is needed to find the direction of causation in this relationship – does being depressed put people at greater risk of malnutrition, or does malnutrition make people depressed? Or is there another factor at work? Malnutrition and depression are very common in the elderly, and can lead have serious implications. Dr Alam said: “Our study shows that health professionals need to take the problems of malnutrition and depression extremely seriously. If staff identify patients as suffering from one of these problems, it should prompt screening for the other.”


* Depression in Malnourished Medical Patients. Dr Shakil Alam, Dr Jose Sanchez- Crespo, Dr A Vignaraja and Dr R D’Souza, Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust. The research was presented at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Edinburgh, 21-24 June 2010.


** Nutritional Status was assessed using the Liverpool nutritional score (Liverpool nutritional assessment: Taken from: Barnet and Chase Farm Nursing Assessment booklet). Malnourishment was a score of 8 or greater.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16