Editorial: Nutrition and older people with dementia

Health Care Professionals' Usage and Documentation of a Swedish Quality Registry Regarding Preventive Nutritional Care

OBJECTIVES

To describe health care staff members' usage and documentation in a Swedish quality registry focusing on a preventive care process regarding the risk area of malnutrition among persons with dementia. The preventive care process includes risk assessment, analysis of underlying causes, planning and performing interventions, as well as evaluating effects.

METHODS

Data were collected from 2 Swedish quality registries, Senior Alert and the Swedish Dementia Register (Svedem). In total, 1929 people with dementia were assessed and 1432 registered as being at risk of malnutrition or malnourished.

RESULTS

Performed nutritional interventions were registered in approximately 65% of cases. In more than 80% of registrations, the analyses of underlying causes were missing. Those who had registered underlying causes had significantly more interventions and the evaluation of the performed intervention was registered. The time between assessment and evaluation depended on care setting and ranged from 0 to 702 days.

CONCLUSIONS

Limitations in registration were noted; however, the register allows staff to focus on nutritional care and has resulted in many risk assessments. Rarely people were registered in all steps of the preventive care process. Large variances in when the performed interventions were evaluated makes it difficult to measure improvements.