Welcome
A message from the BAPEN chairman... Nutrition in a Cold Climate
Contents... Welcome
What’s New
Essence of Care NSW BANS
Event Guide BAPEN Contacts
DR MIKE STROUD Honorary Chairman
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15 BAPEN
Advancing Clinical Nutrition Registered Charity 1023927
BAPEN
Advancing Clinical Nutrition Registered Charity 1023927
British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition
BAPEN is a Registered Charity No: 1023927
A multi-professional association and registered charity established in 1992. Its membership is drawn from doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, nurses, patients, pharmacists, and from the health policy, industry, public health and research sectors.
Principal Functions:
• Enhance understanding and management of malnutrition.
• Establish a clinical governance framework to underpin the nutrition management of all patients.
• Enhance knowledge and skills in clinical nutrition through education and training.
• Communicate the benefits of clinical and cost-effective optimal nutritional care to all healthcare professionals, policy makers and the public.
• Fund a multi-professional research programme to enhance understanding of malnutrition and its treatment.
In Touch – The Newsletter of the British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition
Cost per issue: £2.00 to non members
Printed version: ISSN 1479-3806. On-line version: ISSN 1479-3814.
All contents and correspondence are published at the discretion of the editors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BAPEN. The editors reserve the right to amend or reject all material received. No reproduction of material published within the newsletter is permitted without written permission from the editors. BAPEN accepts no liability arising out of or in connection with the newsletter.
Current times are both good and bad for BAPEN and nutritional care in general. On the one hand, the ‘profile’ of malnutrition could not be higher but on the other, there are financial challenges to every aspect of healthcare in the UK. The importance of best nutritional care is now widely acknowledged by the Department of Health and the Government, and more and more nutritionally relevant standards have been enshrined in the regulatory frameworks for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. But even whilst the inspectors seek assurances that nutritional care is now properly attended to, cuts to catering services remain an attractive choice for managers, and reductions in dietetic departments and nurse specialist posts are viewed as easy wins. Certainly I know from personal communications, that dietetic posts are lost on a weekly basis and over-worked nutrition nurse specialists are expected to cover routine ward shifts. The consequence is that nutritional care in both primary and secondary sectors is under real pressure, and the fact that such changes will be accompanied by inevitable increases in risks and costs, is not noticed in a ‘bean-counting’ culture of healthcare.
For the many of us that work in England, the future of nutritional care is also made more uncertain by the prospect of the new NHS commissioning arrangements which could change everything. We do not know how much attention the GP consortia will pay to best nutritional care and my fear is that the fantastic progress made in recent years, could be lost when so many service commissioning balls are up in the air simultaneously. And to complicate matters further, the changes in England will also see greater responsibility for community nutritional care moving to Local Authorities. Who knows where these may lead?
So what can we do? Well, BAPEN, the BDA and the many other organisations interested in these issues must now actively engage with the new systems to ensure that nutritional care is incorporated into all new service design. This will not be easy but I am delighted that two new BAPEN driven initiatives can help.
The first, discussed in my last column for In Touch, is the BAPEN driven formation of an All Party
Parliamentary Group on Nutritional Care and Hydration (APPG). This should ensure a more consistent approach to political engagement across the entire spectrum of nutritional care from parenteral nutrition in hospital to better food in social housing. The APPG plan has now moved forward so that the group should be open for business within weeks supported by BAPEN and our full partners of the BDA, the RCP and the BSG, with close involvement of many other organisations including Age UK and the NACC. Secondly, following our input into new Royal College of General Practitioners plans to have clinical champions in a number of areas, their shortly-to-be-appointed ‘Nutritional Champion’ is to have a remit specifically covering undernutrition as well as obesity and healthy eating. We should, therefore, be able to work closely with that individual, inviting him or her onto BAPEN Council and seeking immediate engagement with the new ‘Pathfinder’ GP consortia to ensure that their service planning incorporates the thinking contained in our Malnutrition Matters - Commissioning Toolkit. Finally, we must also work out how to engage with local authorities so that instead of sitting back and waiting to see how things pan-out, we seize the opportunities offered by this period of change and ensure that nutritional care is central when they re-organise their services.
This issue’s highlights…
Welcome to your new look In Touch! This issue includes Emma Parsons, Research Fellow, King's College London, sharing information about Improving Standards of Nutritional Care – The Essence of Care Audit Project on page 4. Christine Russell, Chair NSW, provides an overview of the NSW10 results on page 5. Trevor Smith, Chair BANS, presents data from the 2010 BANS Report on page 7 – look out for more BANS data in future issues. A comprehensive guide to key events taking place throughout 2011, relevant to your practice, can be found on page 9.
1 BAPEN In Touch No.60 February 2011
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