Enhancing the nutritional care of older people by recording actual body weight: a quality improvement project.

Abstract

Malnutrition can have significant negative effects on older people's health, as well as a cost burden for health and social care services. Accurate, reliable and regular measurement of a patient's weight is important for prompt identification and management of malnutrition. This article discusses a quality improvement project that was undertaken in an emergency assessment unit for patients aged over 74 years in Northern Ireland. The aim of the project was to improve completion of Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) scores for patients attending the unit by nursing staff recording actual weight rather than recalled weight. A simple intervention of relocating weighing scales in the unit's triage bay resulted in an increase in completed MUST scores from 60% ( n =18) to 97% ( n =29) in the six months following the intervention. Feedback from members of the multidisciplinary team indicated that the intervention had a positive effect on the care they provided to patients and on their working relationships with colleagues.